According to the tradition, you can make this cake only once per year, for Easter. It has to be prepared a day before as Easter is the day of rest, church and family visits. Every family has its own recipe.  When you go for a visit, you take one of your cakes with you as a gift. Your hosts will share their cakes with you and give you some of their cakes to take home. It is a great tradition as you get to try a large variety of Easter cakes, all amazingly tasty with fun decorations on the top.

This recipe does take time and effort if you don’t have a bread-baking machine (or something similar) to mix your dough for 45 minutes. But hey, that’s what husbands are for, right? And I promise you, you will forget all the efforts at the moment when this seductive smell fills your kitchen. If you have kids, it is fun to decorate the cakes together! So do not hesitate and make a note in your agenda for the next year!

The recipe is coming soon…

From Blenheim Market to Your Table

One of the best things you can do on Sunday morning is Blenheim is to visit the local market - a feast of tastes and sounds. Get yourself a cup of great coffee and a freshly made omelette and enjoy the live music and little children acts. I have tried this salsa from the stand selling locally made olive oil. My tastebuds where singing as a sympthony of tastes was playing in my mouth.

 Ingredients:

2 bananas, sliced
1/2 cup sweet peppers, finely chopped
2 red chilis, finely chopped
2 Tbsp chopped coriander leaves
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
juice of 3 limes
1 Tbsp Tussock Chili Pepper olive oil

Serves 4.

Place all ingredients into a bowl and toss well to combine. Serve on toast, or with chicken, fish or cold meats.

Salmon-Mango Quiche

This is a recipe inspired by our trip through the South Island in February. The great cafe culture in New Zealand celebrates its abundance not only in big cities, but also in smaller towns where creative local chefs do their best to offer you the freshest and most creative dishes for breafast, lunch and dinner.

The recipe coming soon…

As a review of the past year, I though it would be a good idea to publish the winning recipes (at least from my point of view ). When I was going through all the posts, these three jumped off the page. I am most proud of the Flat Mushrooms with Anchovies and Apple recipe as I see it as the most creative of all. The Ukrainian Chicken Liver Tart is definitely the winner in the category of “festive and budget” recipes, while the Honey Cake was the king of cakes this year: it shined at birthday parties and among the welcome gifts and it has even been ordered, to my great pleasure.

So here is the winning trio that can also be nicely combined in one menu:

Happy Birthday Olivebloom!

One year ago on this date I published my first recipe here and olivebloom.com was born. Since then lots of other recipes came to life and found their place on these pages. I have mostly maintained my initial schedule of publishing four recipes per months, although my yoga teacher training has taken lots of my time between June and November and I was not able to maintain the same speed at that time. But to compensate for that I have outdone myself in January with the 7 Days Challenge and other posts;-) so on average it should be just about right. Going to check the counter on the website… and I’ve got 52 posts this year!

To celebrate this wonderful event, I have made a cake, as it should happen when someone has a birthday. So tonight we are going to share this cake with my husband and a couple of friends. And while it will be melting in my mouth, I am sure lots of new inspirations for the year to come will pop-up in my head. I will not be able to cook lots of new things in the following couple of weeks as we have packed all my beautiful plates and other utensils in preparation to move back to Amsterdam. But if I come up with something new and exciting during our upcoming vacation in the following two and a half weeks, I will definitely try to update you on that. Meanwhile, enjoy the olivebloom birthday cake!

Ingredients:

For the dough:
3 eggs
100g sugar
100g flour
1/3 teaspoon baking powder

For the filling:
11g agar-agar
175g butter
75g condensed milk
300g sugar
2 egg whites
1 small box of raspberries

Chocolate glazing:
150g dark chocolate of good quality
2 Tbsp of cream
1 Tbsp butter
1-2 Tbsp crushed hazelnuts

Preparation time: 45 minutes
Baking time: 15-20 minutes
Waiting time: 3 hours to overnight

It is best to prepare this cake one day in advance.

Pre-heat the over to 200 C.

Whisk egg yolks with 3 el water and 50g sugar. Whisk in another bowl egg whites with a pinch of salt and 50 g sugar. Stir egg whites into egg yolks. Combine flour and baking powder and then sift it over the egg mixture. Combine until the flour is absorbed but do not overmix it. Lay baking paper over the round baking cake form (it’s best to use the one that opens so that the ring comes off), lightly butter the paper, pour the dough into the dish and bake for 15-20 minutes, taking care that the top does not brown too much. Take out of the oven and let it cool down. Once cooled, slice it with a very sharp knife horizontally so you will have 2 layers.

For the filling, puree all but 6 raspberries and then put the puree through the sift so that all little seeds do not end up in your cake. Whisk the butter with condensed milk until white. Let agar-agar soften in a bowl of cold water. Add 100ml hot water in a pan and place it over medium heat. Add soft agar-agar and sugar and cook for 15 minutes.  Take off the heat. Whisk the egg whites and add them into the agar-agar syrup, stirring continuously. Stir in the raspberry puree. Add this mixture to the butter and milk mixture.

To combine, take the same cake form, place the first slice of dough in it. Add half of the filling, place the other slice of dough and the rest of the filling on top. Place in the fridge to cool for at least 3 hours or overnight. When the filling on top is firm, it is the time to add the glazing.

For the glazing, melt the chocolate au-bain-marie, add cream and butter and stir until well combined. Spread the glazing evenly on top of the cake, sprinkle hazelnuts on top and place the cake back in the fridge to let the glazing become firm. Before serving, distribute the remaining raspberries on top.

Do you know that feeling when you are cozily sitting at home on a day when you totally didn’t plan to be at home and you do not have anything in the fridge, and you are starving? But you are not feeling too well, so you are definitely not up for a trip to a local shop. Gush! Climbing up that mountain on the way home seems like an incredible effort! In this situation, you often end up calling and ordering a pizza, which you most probably will regret a minute after the last slice has disappeared in you mouth. Have you been there? Done that? I know I have.

But don’t give up just yet! Do you see you hand slowly moving towards the phone and your fingers searching for that precious pizza delivery number? Stop right there! It’s a waste of money and a waste of your health. There is usually something to find in the fridge, on a cupboard shelf, in your garden that just might save you day.

I have been just in the situation like this today. No pasta, nothing to put on bread, no milk (that’s a disaster!) and nothing to get out of the freezer. But then, oh my saving thought!, I thought of potatoes. You do have potatoes most of the time at home don’t you? “Why don’t I make nice chunky potatoes, from the oven and have them with aioli and a nice salad from whatever is left in our veggie box?” “But I have no desire peeling them” – another part of my brain has immediately jumped into the discussion, making my hand reach for the phone again - “I would need to peel them, to wait for the oven to warm up. All this time, all this work. I just order a pizza!”

“No!” -  the first voice screams. - “It’s all nonsense. We just wash the potatoes as they are, cut them in little chunks and put them into the microwave for 3 minutes. Turn the grill on. After those three minutes potatoes are almost ready to be eaten but are certainly not tasty yet. So we just sprinkle them with olive oil, with some flour and some dried spices, whatever we can find (I found chicken Cajun spice). In takes 1-2 minutes to make them beautiful and golden and crisply. Look at them transforming in front of your eyes sitting in the oven, just under that grill. A garlic clove is already crushed and mixed with a spoon of mayo and some lemon juice. Some radish and cucumbers are on the plate, drizzled with some olive oil.”

Voila! Here I am, sitting on a huge cushion in my garden, eating my potatoes and writing this story. And I did take one second to take a photo as well. Just in case this story works out and I will want to publish it Oh, and by the way, you do not have to wait for the starvation state on a day like this to make these potatoes. They are great and quick for any occasion, be it lunch with your friends or a lazy afternoon snack you do not want to spend too much time on, since the sun is perfectly positioned in your garden and a bottle of rose is open and shining at you with its warm glow.

This is the first posting in an upcoming category of creative ideas about cooking old dishes in new ways, experimenting with various ingredients and using fun tools in the kitchen. For now, I will be tagging this categoty as “Creative ideas” so it is possible to use the search function to get a complete set. In the future, as I accumulate more items in this category (you are more than welcome to sumbit yours!), I will devote a separate page to it.

Is cheese too expensive? No cheese in the fridge but you are craving pizza? Organizing a pizza party but one of your friends is allergic to cheese? No problem! A great substitute for cheese on top of your pizza is a mayo-egg sauce. Simply combine in a cup 1 egg with 2Tbsp of mayonnaise and add some salt. If you like (I love it!), add a clove of crashed garlic. Spread the topping over the pizza and the result will surprise you!

The 7 Days Challenge is over for me. Yesterday I have published my last daily menu. Hopefully, these menus have given you some inspiration. There are still 2 prizes waiting, so plan you menu and submit!

For me, the results of the challenge are really satisfying:

• We saved $100 on groceries;
• I did not have to think in the middle of the week after a working day “Do I need to go to a supermarket? What should I buy?”;
• My husband has concluded that the dishes from this week were really great and he is looking forward to another week of the challenge.

But the most important thing is that this challenge has just confirmed the well-known principle that setting a goal and some good planning always work It all comes down to choosing slightly more budget recipes, recipes with not too long list of ingredients and thinking how different ingredients can be reused in another dish.

As promised, here is my shopping list:

Lunch:
Tanzanian Beans according to Thalma’s recipe

Snack:
Green Smoothie with Silverbeet, Banana and Honey

Dinner:
Tuna-Potato Cakes with Cucumber-Parsley Salad

Lunch:
Mussel-Leek No Crust Quiche

Snack:
Green Smoothie with Silverbeet, Spinach and Apple

Dinner:
Simple Spinach Pasta