rosemary muffins with ham and walnuts

I have to admit, I´ve been relaxed  and was taking time with regards to writing/translating my german recipes for the blog...You can´t blame me, we have summer here, too hot & humid to be inspired! Crafting and posting are a bit out of  my world right now.LOL!

But wait, I just dragged myself  today  to finish translating this recipe. I know there are some readers of my FB page  Challenging Arts & Crafts  waiting out there for this one....so,  I finally wrote & translated it for the benefit of those waiting this to get posted. 

Rosemary Muffins with Ham and Walnuts

Ingredients

fresh  rosemary ( or 1 tsp of chopped & dried  rosemary)

40 g walnuts coarsely chopped

125 ml olive OIL

1 garlic clove 

250 g  flour 

2 tsps baking powder 

1 tsp salt 

1 large egg 

250 ml buttermilk 

frshly ground pepper 

100 g parmesan or grana padano 

cheese, freshly grated 

125 g of dried cranberry 

rosemary to garnish

                                                          Rosemary twigs

Preheat the oven at 175°C/ 347°F ... brush the muffin tray with butter or margarine or you can use paperforms to line the muffin tray. 

1. Pluck the rosemary needles from it´s twig and chop these coarsely with the walnuts. Heat 2 tablespoon oil in a pan and briefly roast the rosemary and walnuts adding the clove of crushed garlic. 

2. Mix the flour with baking powder and salt, set aside.....

Whisk the eggs in another container, add the remaining olive oil and the buttermilk, season with ground pepper.

Add this mixture to the flour stirring constantly to make a smooth batter...then add the rosemary, walnut, parmesan  and cranberrys rapidly among the dough work. 

3. Fill each paper case with 3/4 batter and garnish the top with a thin slice of ham. Bake on the middle rack 25-30 minutes. 

4.  Take muffins out of the oven and let cool on a wire rack. This can be served hot or cold.

Have a great start of the week! 

xoxo, 
Mercy

a weekend full of flowers

I´ve had an inspiring time in my household last weekend.... I was able 

to make a 30-minute walk at the same time tagging along my camera ( as usual)

 to the kiosk to get  the morning paper. 

 I could drive and get the morning paper in 10 minutes by car  as I told

 you before..... but  yeah, it´s a 30 minute  walk of excuse and   "dragging" 

my feet,   it´s healthy and is a good exercise...  

The field I´d like to present to you is not new, I had a blog on this last year...
It´s actually just a small area of the field near our home and it´s planted with 
gladiolas and sunflowers every summer.

Anyone would just have to pick or cut their own favorite colors..
You pay what you cut, the price for the flower quantity is 

written on a bulletin board and a coin box and cutters are provided on
 the spot. No cashiers, no guards...honesty is the best policy.

There are many of such fields in our district ... and because we
 are surrounded  by  wheatfields and  cornfields,  we´re
 blessed  that farmers initiated such project. So as to say,  we the locals
 get to enjoy the colors and the fun of picking our own flowers...

My weekend was full of cut flowers... after the walk,  I cut a few gladiolas 
with different colors buds of which were still close. After a day, 
all the buds on  stalks/stems begun to open like popping out of it´s shell..

The sunflowers are still coping with its own buds, normally  at this time, they 

should already be in full bloom...hmmm,  maybe in a couple of days,

 they would start showing up too!

Since I came back from my holiday, my dog´s yellow

 rosebush never ceases to  produce buds... 

That´s why whenever  new blooms were there,  I cut and make an
 arrangement like this...

My weekend at home was spent productively  & nicely...... 

thanks  to the flower inspirations!

Stuffed Pork Belly

Most of the dishes that I cook in my viennese home are influenced by so many cultures like the philippine, spanish,chinese, viennese, american and many more.

I´m very thankful to my mother for teaching me to cook at an early age of nine. You may be asking why so early? Well... you see, I have five brothers, I´m the 4th and  in the middle with three older and two youger siblings.

I couldn´t blame my mom  when she always asked me to stay beside her in the kitchen. There was no way for her to get any of my brothers to stand infront of the stove  to peel those potatoes and onions, LOL!

While my brothers were playing outside, I  was busy in the kitchen getting instructions and tips on the basics of cooking plus a bit of home economics. Everytime I look back,  I couldn´t help but smile!

Those are pretty memories that will never be forgotten by me...
I´m so so glad I´ve had those cooking basics that my mom insisted me to learn.

Now let´s go to the recipe...

Here , I´ll show you how I prepare the Stuffed Pork Belly.. I cook this dish only on a weekend because I have more time to prepare this at home if I´m not working..

Stuffed Pork Belly

Ingredients: 

1.5 kg pork belly 

 bread cubes..( I used dried 
ones about 4 cups)

1 pc egg 

375 ml milk 

30 g butter 

1 medium size onion - diced

salt 

Parsley 

2 crushed garlic cloves

ground pepper 

1 tsp caraway seeds

cooking oil 

Preparations:

Stuffing: 

1.  Sauté the onion in a frying pan with 1 tbsp cooking oil til golden brown. Place the bread cubes in a bowl, add the milk, egg, salt, onion and parsley, mix properly til the egg covers the bread, leave to soak. When the milk is fully absorbed, mix again til and set aside for stuffing the pork belly.

2. Rub the belly meat with the crucshed garlic, salt and pepper. Then make a pocket-like slot cutting the middle part of the pork belly avoiding to cut the sides thoroughly. Fill the bread mixture into the pocket closing the opening with metals sticks or toothpicks or if you like, you may tie the the pork belly all over with a cotton thread to close the opening. 

3. Fill the oven pan with water and place  the stuffed pork belly with the skin 
downwards soaking in water. Roast at 250°C/482°F  for about 20 minutes. When the skin is boiled and cooked in the pan water, the skin will become soft and eventually would pop out when roasted and will become crispy.

4. Take out the meat, place it on a chopping board, cut the skin with a knife just like making a grid cutting, rub the skin with caraway seeds and give it back to the oven pan. Add 1 tbsp of cooking oil to the water and roast the meat at 220°C/428°F. 

From time to time, pour the juice over the meat so that it doesn´t get dry... say about every 20 minutes. If the juice become lesser, add 1 cup of water to continue roasting for about 1 1/2 hours.

Note :
Remember, the water/liquid determines the amount of gravy you would want to have for the meat, so if the liquid gets lesser add a cup each time during roasting. To make the gravy thicker you may add a tbsp of  flour dissolved in 3 tbsp water. You may also add 1 tbsp of creme fraiche, garlic powder and more pepper according to your taste..
Serve hot... when serving, you may add cooked rice or raosted potatoes according to your preference... but the bread stuffing should be sufficient as by-dish.

The rule of the thumb is ...for every kilo of pork belly,  roasting time is for an hour.

      Enjoy cooking this !

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Grießschmarren

Grießschmarren - Wheat Crumble

I can´t think of another english translation for Grießschmarren... 

"Schmarren"  is an austrian dialect for a sweet dish or flour based pastry made out of flour or ground wheat mixed with milk, butter, and sugar and fried in a pan with fat. But... the word could also mean  in informal or colloquial way as " rubbish" to describe something... 
or if someone´s making a person mad and that person would answer

"...das geht dich einen schmarren an! " meaning... "  that's none of your business!".

This sweet dish was so popular in the older days in the countrysides where wives of the farmers prepare this for the whole family... It was so practical because all of  the ingredients were available in their farms. They produced their own milk, butter, flour and eggs were available in abundance. It is cheap to make but very delicious in taste. Nowadays, this sweet dish is so popular in restaurants as a dessert.

This is a family favorite too and it´s easy to make...You can also use sweetener instead of sugar.. I used the stevia powder equivalent to the sugar... What I do is, measure the sugar given in this recipe by using a tablespoon, transfer the spooned sugar into another plate and count how many spoons there are...I  used the same number of stevia in spoons. Below is the recipe.

Grießschmarren

Ingredients:

250 grams ground semolina flour
500 ml milk 
50 grams sugar (or 4 tbsp stevia powder or other
sugar substitute)
50 grams butter or margarine
1 pack vanilla sugar or 1 tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup raisins or prunes (cut coarsely)
1 tsp grated lemon or orange peel
Berries ( raspberry, blueberries, etc)

Preparation:

1. in a saucepan, bring the milk to boil, add the semolina wheat, mix well until the milk is fully absorbed.. remove from heat and let the wheat cool down.

2. Heat the butter in a frying pan, add the wheat and roast it til it gets brown, add the sugar, vanilla sugar, grated lemon peel and the raisins...continue roasting til all sides of the wheat become golden brown. When done, arrange in a platter and top with berries and sprinkle with sugar. 

Note: You may sprinkle more sugar as toppings according to your taste..best served warm with chocolate sauce or fruit compote of your choice.

HAPPY BAKING!

the organic fresh produce

During our vacation in Spain, we were constantly surprised by our spanish neighbour, who is also our mason and brought us the veggies and fruits he harvested from his finca. 

His finca (farm) is just about a hundred meters from our house. He is cultivating his land of about 20 thousands squares meter with lots of various trees, avocados, olives, mango and many more..

In short, he is self sufficient and all the veggies he is cultivating are organic as well as the fertilizers he is using..manures and all that...no insecticide to eradicate the parasites in all his plants.

.....and so we had fresh produce in some of the days..

As we live up the hills, we need not go to the Supermarket to buy veggies and fresh fruits... Market day in our area takes place on Mondays.

If our mason isn´t working, you can surely find him building his house below us or he is tending to his farm like here in the pic below.

lemon tree with lots of fruits

When we were invited to his  house which is still undergoing consatruction, I saw his artistic work done in each of the corner of the house and he is doing it alone by himself without the help of anyone.

We were lucky to have him as we just have to call him by phone and if he´s available, he would surely work on some small projects in our house to our full satisfaction... Below is his house still going under construciton. It´s full of artistic details...it really is!!!

Til  then..enjoy your Sunday!

of roses and ondori crochet patterns

It had been a sunny day last Thursday , my last day of the week in the office. I was really looking forward to my weekly TGIF plans which are my food shopping and the other things

chores I planned for the weekend. 

Friday had been a disaster (!)... surprisingly,  I couldn´t start the Xtrail... it was the battery I supposed and it really gave me the blues (!!!),  we also had a medical appointment that afternoon and for goodness sake who would schedule a doc´s appointment on a Friday when most if not all business offices close at 2 pm ...?

I called up the Touring Club and they sent us a technician to recharge the battery. We had a tight day, so many things to get done... so we rushed to the club´s premises and after waiting for more than an hour, we had the old one replaced by new maintenance-free battery. It cost us 130.-Euros which I think  was expensive :-(

Afterwards, I went food shopping and I treated myself to a freshly  cut bunch of pink roses to cheer up my day! I Put them in a flower vase and decorated the table using the tablecloth I crocheted myself some years back. I guess the rose vignette is pretty! 

The tablecloth featured here was crocheted when I was commuting by train to work in the 90´s.  It was a long ride for about 45 minutes.

I got the motif from one of two Ondori Crochet Books given to me by my japanese boss  when he and his family went home to Tokyo for a holiday.

The cloth can also be used as bedspread for a single bed. It has a total of 66 squares crocheted together and sort of framed by a border.

 I really can´t remember how long it took me to finish this, but I was crocheting this while on the train...

When the size of the cloth had been bigger, I stopped working on this in the train since I couldn´t handle it´s volume anymore... so I finished it at home... 

When I was finishing this at home, I was working on a new Ondori motif in the train and so my hands were not left idle on the way to work .. I will show you the other one next time...

These roses made my Friday and by just looking at them, my traffic stress on that afternoon to and from the doctor´s slowly drifted away..

HAPPY SATURDAY TO ALL !!!

I would love to read your comments, you´re welcome

 to ask questions too!

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