Protein Packed Post-Run Flapjacks

I've been training seriously for the last 4 months to get in shape for a half marathon. The big day is coming up and I've been preparing as much as possible. Eating well, staying hydrated, training regularly, and I'm now as ready as I will ever be. I've just been laying hands on the last couple of details, and started planning my post race recovery snack. I went to a sports nutrition shop and asked for recommendation. They ended up selling me an overpriced flapjack (or granola bar as it's called in the US). When I came back I thought that I could have done my homework properly and have made it myself. Next thing I'm in the kitchen mixing it up and here's my own version of a protein packed flapjack and the nutritional table I've worked out:

1 Serving (100g)       

Calories                329  

Fat                       19.6g

Potassium            95mg   

Carbohydrate      31.4g 

(Fibre)                   6.1g  

(Sugar)                10.0g  

Protein                11.3g

                                                                                

Ingredients:

200g   Almonds w. skin, blended into a course flour

250g   Oats blended into a course flour

250g   Roasted Peanuts, blended into peanut butter (just keep blending in the food processor)

1dl      Maca Powder (Some "super-nutritious" Inca Plant. Can be left out)

400ml Almond Milk (or regular milk if you want)

1 tbsp  Honey

2 Banans, mashed into a pure

Pinch of Salt

150g Dark Chocolate

Turn on the oven for 130ºC. Then start by making a course flour of the almonds in a food processor. Do the same to the oats. Mix them in a bowl with the maca powder and a pinch of salt. Keep chopping the peanuts in the food processor until it turns into peanut butter. Plob it into the oats. Blend the bananas. Add them to the mixture too. Heat the almond milk and dissolve the honey in it and pour it all into the mix. With a spoon or your hands, mix it all together to a paste. Put the paste into a ovenproof tray lined with baking paper. Press it out as flat and even as possible. Bake for 25 minutes.

 When the time is up, break the chocolate into smaller pieces and place them on the hot "cake". Leave for five minutes while they melt. Distribute it evenly with a spatula. Let the whole thing cool off completely until the chocolate sets. Just before it sets completely, cut into 15 similarly sized flapjacks. 

Here's the irresistible homemade flapjack, void of strange additives but packed with proteins and carbohydrates to rebuild and refuel your muscles after a hard workout.  

Green Shake - Running on Spinach

When I was younger I used to be more active. I guess that's pretty common. I played handball, football and did Taekwon-do for many years. In the military we had to run nearly every morning and did lots of P.E. throughout the week, not to mention carrying around heavy machinery all the time. Then I moved to London and just nearly stopped from one day to another. My physical activity was reduced to dancing awkwardly for eight hours straight on Saturday nights. Jumping some 10-15 years ahead, I decided to take up running last year. I bought some half-decent trainers and started clocking up the kilometres. After having had all the typical injuries most runners experience, I decided to change a few things. I stopped pushing myself to improve my time in every run. And I decided that if I added a bit more fruit and veggies to my diet, I might just recover faster and grow stronger. So I started with my breakfast. Spinach is good, right? At least that's what I remember from reading Popeye. So I wanted to create a smoothie based on that, and which would be as green, filling and happy as the day was young. So now I wake up and start with a big shot of vitamins. You probably think it's going to taste weird, blending spinach into a smoothie. But I guarantee that you can't taste it one bit. I'd even bet you can make your children grow fond of spinach.

Ingredients:
Big handful of fresh, washed spinach
1 ripe banana
1 kiwi, leave the peel on, but wash it and cut the end off
1 small cup of natural yogurt, I use Greek for a smoother texture
1 tbsp of chia seeds (high in omega-3 fatty acids, sodium, calcium, phosphorus and manganese)
1 tsp of honey
1 small cup of soy milk  

Just to brighten the day!

Place all the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Couldn't be easier.

Terrine - Voilà!

If you want to impress your dinner guests, you could make something French and fancy that looks like

it's really complicated. The Terrine is just such a recipe. You don't need any skills, really, its' made in advance and will basically cook itself so you have your hands free to prepare other things at the same time. The Terrine has many variations and can be made with fish, vegetables, or as in this case minced meat. Yes, it's basically a fancy meatloaf. It's served cold as a starter, and to spice it up a little I made a wasabi mayonnaise to go with it. Here's how you make it:

Terrine:

400 g. minced beef

400 g. pork sausages (casings removed)

1 small onion, shredded

1 clove of garlic

2 tbsp. cognac (or Brandy)

2 tsp. herbes de provence

A small handful of peeled pistachios 

1 pack of smoked bacon (to cover your mold)

2-3 large carrots, boiled for 12 minutes, cut in long sticks

Strips of meat of your liking (duck breast, pork tenderloin etc.)

Wasabi Maynaise:

1/2 cup of mayonnaise

Wasabi to taste (start with a little, as some is very strong)

A few drops of green food coloring (Optional)

Served with:

Pickled cucumber

Raspberry vinagaitte reduction (or a bit of jam will do)

Toasted sesame seeds

Toasted bread

 Start by mixing all the ingredients for the terrine except the bacon, strips of meat and carrots.

 Line your bread form with oven paper and a overlapping layer of bacon that goes up the side. 

 Fill about one 1/3 of the mince into the base. Press it well so you don't have any air pockets. Press a layer of carrots and strips of meat lengthwise into the mince. Put another layer of mince on top. Add some more carrots and meat strips lengthwise, but in opposite pattern of the previous (i.e. meat on the outside/carrots in the centre). Add the last third of mince, Fold the bacon over. Again, make sure everything is well pressed together.

Wrap the whole thing in tinfoil. Place it in bain marie in a 180ºC oven for 1.5 hour or until the centre reaches a temperature of 72º. Take it out and let it cool down while placing some kind of pressure on top (I used some folded cardboard with a pot full of water on top). Once it's cooled down a bit, put it in the fridge for at least 12 hours.

 Once refrigerated, and you cut into it, it should look something like this. Slice it to the thickness you like.

Mix the ingredients for the wasabi mayo and plate up with some pickled cucumber, a drizzle of some raspberry vinaigrette reduction and sprinkle it with some sesame seeds. Serve with a good loaf of bread.

Black Pasta Vongole

Happy 2013 everyone. After lots of celebration and perhaps a little too much food I just needed something lighter for a change. I have had a bag of black pasta standing in the cupboard for some time, so I thought it was time to use it. Black pasta is nothing but regular pasta dyed with squid ink. It tastes pretty much the same as regular pasta so don't let it put you off. But it gives a beautiful contrast to many dishes such as this Vongole. Plus, it's really fast food. The time it will take you to boil the pasta is approximately the same you need to cook the rest. For 2 people you'll need:

300g black pasta

Handful of flat-leaf parsley

3 cloves of garlic

Small handful of cherry tomatoes, halved

500g small fresh clams

1 small glass of white wine

Crushed cayenne to taste

Salt, pepper

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp butter (can be left out)

 Prepare the veggies. Don't tell me it isn't easy to remember which when you line them up like the Italian flag. Set a bit of the parsley aside for decoration. Then, start boiling the pasta according to the package while you heat up some olive oil in a large frying pan (preferably one with a lid) to medium high temperature.

When the oil is hot, toss in the garlic, tomatoes and the cayenne. 

 As soon as the garlic starts to get lightly brown (almond colour), throw in the parsley and stir it once. 

Then pour in the glass of wine, let it evaporate for a couple of minutes, just to get rid of the alcohol flavour. Then throw in the clams. As always, discard any clams that are open before cooking, and any that aren't open after cooking. Put a lid on and shake the entire pan several times, so the clams move around a bit and get steamed equally. It should take somewhere between 3 to 4 minutes for them to open and be cooked.

 The pasta should be ready by now. Mix it in with the clams and tomatoes. Add, if you like, a spoonful of butter for extra richness or sprinkle with good virgin olive oil and decorate with some extra parsley.

Serve on a hot plate.

Filled Chocolates - What to do and not to do

For my birthday my sister gave  me a professional poly-carbonate chocolate mold and a couple of bags of organic melting chocolate from the confectionery where she works, Woodshade Organics. I have written about them before, here. She also included her notes and some recipes from a chocolate course she did. With all this I thought I'd venture into the delicate world of confectionery too. At least on a small scale (for me and my closest). The principles aren't that hard, but perfection is. I made a couple of errors with my first batch, then did some online research and tried again. The second time was much better, and I'd now like to share what I've learnt. It's far from a definite guide, but it can help you avoid some of the same pitfalls I fell in to. As caramel filled chocolates are my favourite, those were the ones I made. But you can, of course put any filling to your liking, such as fruit, peanut butter, marzipan, nuts, mint, dulce de leche). You'll need:

Shells:
About 200g high quality melting chocolate (I recommend Woodshade, but any good melting chocolate will do). The quantity really depends on how many you are making, how big your mold is etc.
Caramel Filling (enough for small 150 pieces. Any left over can always be poured over vanilla ice cream):
200g sugar
200g cream
50g butter
100-150g dark or milk chocolate
Pinch of salt
(A few drops of rum essence)

1 Candy thermometre (essential for a perfect result)

Step 1: To make the filling, start by letting the sugar melt slowly in a pot with a thick base and tall sides. Do not stir as you might accidentally set off a crystallization process and end up with a big hard lump. You can, however, move the pot around and shake it lightly to make sure the sugar melts equally. Make sure you don't use too much heat or the caramel will burn. Once all the sugar is dissolved and has turned an amber colour (you can let it go darker to get an intenser flavour, but be careful it goes from dark to burnt without warning), remove it from the heat and pour in the cream. It goes without saying that you need to be careful around molten sugar. Let it bubble up (hence the tall sides of the pot) and then start stirring it with either a metal whisk or a fork. Let it simmer for a minute or two while stirring constantly to make sure any sugar lumps are dissolved. Let it cool down to about 40ºC (104ºF) and stir in a pinch of salt and the butter until shiny. 

Chop the chocolate for the filling finely and add it. Dark chocolate for a darker more intense filling, milk or white for a lighter one. At this stage it divided my portion into 3. One for pure caramel, one medium runny to which I added a few drops of rum essence, and one which i gave a good amount of chocolate. The amount you add determines how liquid your filling is. The more, the harder. Add > 200g for a solid filling, 200g-100g soft to runny, and < 100g quite runny. There should be sufficient residual heat to melt it. Pour into a piping bag or just a small plastic bag and let it cool off completely, e.g. in the fridge. Cooling it down will further harden the filling.

Step 2: Tempering the chocolate for the shells. To get perfectly shiny chocolate shells you need to follow a strict procedure called tempering the chocolate. This will prevent the crystals in the chocolate to align randomly and create a matte or white looking chocolate. You will need a thermometre and a water bath/bain-marie (a bowl put inside another pot with simmering water). You can use a microwave but it's harder to control the heat, and if you are in a rush, you probably aren't making filled chocolates anyway. Chop the chocolate finely and let 3/4 of it melt in the bain-marie while stirring. As each type of chocolate has different amounts and structure of fat, use the thermometre and the following table (all temperatures in celcious):

                                            T1              T2          T3

Dark choclate                      52º             29º          31º

Milk Chocolate                    47º             27º         30º

White Chocolate                  43º             26º         29º

T1 is the first temperature you want to reach, but not pass. Take it off the heat a bit before the you reach the temperature as the residual heat from the pot might keep warming it up. This is why you need a bain-marie as it changes slower than over direct heat. You can put the pot on a cold surface if it's going too fast. Just be careful not to get any water in to the chocolate. Once T1 has been reached stir in the remaing 1/4 of chopped chocolate. This allows for a more even crystallization. Let it cool off to T2 while stirring it. Then slowly heat it back up to T3 which is the working temperature.

Step 3: Making the shells. Pour the chocolate into the mold and turn it in all directions to make sure it distributes all over the sides. Leave to rest upside-down over a grill rack. Scrape off the remaining chocolate on top. This is where I made mistake number one. I used far to little chocolate which resulted in very fine shells, which weren't going to hold anything liquid. Also, realizing my mistake I panicked and threw it in the freezer to make it cool of faster. As I started adding a second layer it hardened immediately and made very uneven shells. See below for the final guide for the perfect shell. 

Step 4: Adding the filling. After the shells have hardened, time to add the filling. As I knew my shells were very fine I went for my solid filling which I made small balls of and squeezed in to the shells. Then I poured another layer of chocolate on and put them in the fridge to harden.  

Step 5: After about 10-15 minutes of hardening I banged out my chocolates. These were some of the better looking ones, but many were cracked and full of tiny holes from air bubbles. Hmm, well, they could be eaten just the same... It's chocolate after all....

Step 3 - 5 revisited: So, for my definitive guide for the perfect shells, I got all creative and melted a bit of white chocolate which i drizzled in the molds with random patterns. i then tapped the mold against the table a few times to get rid of any bubbles. I let them harden, but not in the fridge. Just the time it took to melt the chocolate for the proper casings.  

I melted the chocolate according to the tempering process (one thing I did get right the first time). This time a made a bigger portion so I had plenty to work with. After reaching T3 I poured it in to the molds and carefully made sure it was well distributed. Then I tapped the mold against the table several times to get rid of any tiny bubbles.  

I then turned the mold upside down over an oven grill with some baking paper underneath. This way the chocolate would run down the sides and create a thicker shell. After settling for a couple of minutes I turned it round again and scraped the excess off the top (you always want a clean top; use a flat silicon spatula). I put in a zip-lock back and put it in the fridge for 10-15 minutes to solidify. All the drippings on the baking paper was scraped up and put back in to the bowl of melted chocolate.  

After hardening I held the mold up against the light to find any this areas where the light came through. With a fine brush I painted those areas until no longer transparent. Finally, a good set of shells.

 I poured the liquid caramel filling with rum essence in. 

 Filled them up with more chocolate which was scraped clean and flat with the spatula. It was then hardened further 10 minutes in the fridge before tapping them out,

And here, the final result...home-made caramel filled chocolate. A littel laborous, but so worth it.

Go-with-the-flo(s)

Today's recipe is a homage to my aunt Dorthe, also known as Flo, who runs Tebstrup Gedeosteri (click link to visit their page), where they produce a variety of wonderful organic goat cheese. Although it's actually just a simple bruschetta, I've decided to call them "Go with the Flo". Here's what you need:

Day-old bread, toasted

High quality extra virgin olive oil

Freshly blended tomatoes (with a bit of garlic for a kick)

Tebstrup Gedeost in oil (or any soft goat cheese)

A couple of fresh basil leaves, cut into fine threads (look up the cutting technique 'chiffonade')

A light sprinkle of sea salt flakes (fleur de sel)

Assemble the toasted bread with some drops of olive oil, the tomato and the cheese. Toast it a bit further. Sprinkle on the basil, some more olive oil and the sea salt.  

The tub of soft goat cheese in oil with thyme, rosemary and pink pepper corn. 

Sinful Chocolate Ice Cream w. Marzipan

Making and eating this chocolate ice cream will send you straight to hell if you believe in the seven deadly sins: You'll feel gluttonous, no doubt, and greedy. You simply can't eat and have enough of it. The rich, velvety texture of the chocolate along with it's aphrodisiac properties will make you lustful. Or you'll just want to sit quietly and savour it by yourself, feeling pretty slothful. You'll envy those who have made it, and feel pride when you have made your own batch. And I assure you, you'll feel the wrath building up inside you when the tub is empty until you make some more. For those who take the above-mentioned sins lightly, you'll have to make this. You'll need:

300 ml cooking cream

150g dark chocolate

3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Woodshade, the Danish brand I've promoted earlier)

Good pinch of table salt

4-5 egg yolks

115g icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla sugar/extract

300 ml whipping cream

75g of raw marzipan (Again, Woodshae organic).

 Start by chopping the dark chocolate in to smaller pieces. Reserve about 50g for chocolate chips to be added at the end. Bring the cooking cream to a light simmer and add chocolate, cocoa powder and salt. 

 Take it off the heat and stir until all the chocolate has dissolved.

 In another bowl, beat the egg yolks with the icing sugar until it's light and airy. Add the vanilla sugar.

 Add the chocolate mixture into the eggs bit by bit while stirring. Don't pour it all in at once, or the yolks will cook and coagulate.

 Pour the mixture back into the pot and heat at very low temperature until the mixture reaches a temperature about 70ºc. Any higher and the mixture might curdle. If you don't have a thermometre the common wisdom is to wait until the mixture is thick enough to cover a wooden spoon. However, the chocolate already makes this mixture very thick. I recommend using a thermometre. They are relatively cheap and you'll be using it for a lot of other things in the future. Whip the remaining cream and gently fold it into the mixture. Refrigerate it overnight stirring it once or twice.  

 Pour it in to your ice cream machine and let it churn until it has the consistency of, well, ice cream.

 Make small balls of raw marzipan and mix them into the ice cream along with the remaining 50 grams of chopped dark chocolate. 

Pour the ice cream into tubs and freeze for at least 1 hour for it to firm up a little more. All I can say is, "You are welcome."

Boston Cream Cake

This is just a very quick recipe for Boston Cream Cake. It takes very little time to prepare and is made with ingredients that we usually have in our kitchen, with the exception, perhaps, of the cake base. Here's what you need:

1 Cakebase

Filling:

3 Eggs

6 tbsp Sugar

2 tbsp Corn starch

1/2 tbsp Butter

250ml Cream

250ml Milk

1 tsp Vanilla

Pinch of salt

Ganache:

110g Dark Chocolate

120ml cream

1 tsp butter Pinch of salt

 Beat eggs, sugar and corn starch in a bowl until fluffy.

 Heat up the cream, milk and butter till it just starts to boil. Turn down the heat, add the egg mixture and stir while cooking for about 1 minute. It should start to become thicker. Add vanilla and a pinch of salt. Let it cool down completely.

 Pour one half of the mixture over one layer of a cake base. It should be thick, and not too liquid. Don't let it go all the way out to the edges. Put another cake layer on top. Gently press it and the cream will start reaching the sides. Pour the other half of the filling over and repeat with the last layer of cake.

 To make the ganache, bring the cream to a boil add the butter and pour it over the chocolate cut in smaller pieces. Let it sit for a minute, then stir until smooth. Add a pinch of salt.

Pour the ganache over the cake and spread it gently to the edges until it starts dripping over. Let it cool down completely before serving.