Sneak preview and Bulgarian Salad

How complicated it is to maintain a blog when you don’t really have access to the old Internet. But I’ll give you a small teaser/taster of what is to come once I return to the 21^st century. I’ve been making a great paella, frying up some arepas, meddled with some falafels, and not least will there be a photo tour of our gastroholidays in Bulgaria. The picture below is from an amazing salad we had in Veliko Tarnovo in one of it’s best restaurant called Shtastlivetsa (Lucky Man). And then I tried to copycat it in the picture below.

Ingredients: Lettuce, tomatoes (the best tomatoes I’ve ever had were Bulgarian, without a doubt), cucumber, red onion rings, olives, crispy bacon, chicken pieces fried in paprika and oregano, white bulgarian cheese (similar to feta, but not as salty), jalapeños instead of chilies, and a paste made of mushed red pepper with white cheese. Before serving it’s given a quick shot of olive oil and sprinkled with oregano and dill. It brought us back to Bulgaria if not for longer than the duration of the dinner.

Original version...

My copycat version.

Apologies for poor maintenance of this blog

Hello dear reader of this blog,

I just thought I needed to explain why this blog apparently has gone dead all of a sudden. We were about to buy a house when the owner suddenly pulled out at the very last minute. We had already packed everything, cancelled our monthly bills and were ready to move out. Luckily we could stay in our rented apartment, but they cut the phone bill and thus the Internet connection. So until further notice, I will be cooking away (as soon as all my kitchen tools are unpacked), taking lots of photos and, as soon as I'm back up again I will work my way through new recipes and post them here bit by bit. Not least from the inspiration I've picked up from travelling through Bulgaria this summer. The food there is superb and dead cheap. You'll hear more when our Internet Provider decides to give us our line back.

Until then, happy cooking to all!

Yummy Sourdough Buns with Oats, Sunflower and Flax Seeds

I wonder how many have made the sourdough starter I published about a month ago. Well, I thought not, so you are already hopelessly behind and will miss out on these babies. Ok, you can substitute the sourdough with regular yeast, but, come on, it's not really the same experience. My starter is still alive and healthy and I feed it regularly whenever I'm baking bread (about once a week). And if you haven't got a sourdough culture going, you can't really call yourself a food nerd yet, can you? Furthermore, you might want to check out my recipe for strawberry jam as well. Read on to find out why.

Ingredients:
350 ml lukewarm water
3-4 tbsp sourdough starter
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
100g whole wheat flour
150g + 250g white flour
25g flax seeds
75 g sunflower seeds
100g oat flakes
50 ml olive oil

Dissolve the sourdough starter in the fingerwarm water. Add the salt and sugar.

Add the wholewheat flour and 150g of white flour. Set it aside somewhere warm and wait for this "sponge" to come alive. It's active when it is quite bubbly and frothy. It took about 1 hour in my case but might depend on your sourdough starter and room temperature.

Add the seeds and oats. Mix them in.
Stir in the oil. Add the rest of the flour.

Knead the bread for about 10 minutes. No, not 3 or 5 or 15 minutes... 10 minutes!

Form the dough to a ball. Rub it lightly with olive oil and set it aside covered until it has doubled in size. Again, this depends on so many things, so just keep an eye on it. When it's doubled in size, it's ready.
Punch down the dough and divide it into 10-12 balls, which you shape in the palm of your hands. Cover them and let them rise one last time. It took me about 45 minutes. Sourdough is quite slower than industrial yeast.

Bake in a very hot, preheated oven at 220º for about 16 minutes. It's always a good trick to add a tray with water in the oven and/or spray water into the oven with a vaporiser. This raises the humidity in the oven and makes the buns puff up more. Transfer to a cooling rack once they are done. Don't cut into them right away, but way at least 20 minutes.
And then you will be rewarded with these goodies which are actually really healthy and good for you. That is until you spread them with butter and add a dollop of homemade strawberry jam.