posts

Lavender Honeycomb Butter and Alacati

31/01/201305/09/2015 Moya12 Comments

Visiting Istanbul for the first time last year my husband and I wanted to spend a few days in a different region of Turkey before heading to Istanbul. Searching the internet and gathering bits of information here and there as you do, decided to visit a small town on the Aegean coast… Alacati.

This beautiful and charming picturesque town is filled with old stone houses, lots of narrow streets lined with sidewalk cafés, bars, restaurants, boutiques and antique shops. As it was low season Alacati was quiet (some businesses close) and with not many visitors around, felt like we had the town to ourselves.

Even though our visit was short and sweet you could feel a real sense of community spirit and pride among the local people who live there. We met the lovely Neyran while visiting Lisa Cortis very colourful home textile shop and ended up sitting at a sidewalk café, chatting like old friends while Neyran filled us in about the history of this enchanting town… thank you for recommending the Barbun restaurant, it was a delicious end to our short stay.

Unfortunately we had not been able to include a Saturday on our visit, missing the famous Alacati market mentioned on this blog Cafe Fernando. I never got to taste the chocolate and chestnut cake mentioned as it was not on the menu. However, we enjoyed some delicious home-made cakes at the charming and quaint Tas Otel during our stay and the owner kindly parted with one of their recipes… which ~~I will share in a later post~~ you can find here.

The smell of dried lavender perfumed the air throughout the Tas Otel and the fresh honey we enjoyed at breakfast inspired this simple recipe… butter perfumed with lavender and sweetened with fresh honeycomb brought back from Turkey… utterly delicious slathered over hot toast, crusty bread or warm scones.

This beautiful and extremely friendly cat lives at the Tas Otel whose name was difficult to pronounce and remember… you were right Zeynep (the hotel owner), I have already forgotten!

Lavender Honeycomb Butter

Ingredients:

100g slightly salted butter, softened
100g fresh honeycomb or thick-set honey
1/8 teaspoon dried lavender, crushed
1/4 teaspoon dried lavender

How to make: In a bowl mix all the ingredients together using a wooden spoon, until combined. Place the flavoured butter into a suitable sized mould which has been pre-lined with cling film. Leave the butter in the fridge for at least 8 hours for the flavours to develop. If you do not wish to shape the butter with a mould, place the butter into a suitable bowl to serve. Recipe can easily be doubled.

Caramelized Pineapple with Chilli and Sweet Coconut Broth

23/01/201323/05/2014 Moya13 Comments

Easing myself into the new year with this light and refreshing dessert for this months blog hop themed Tropical Paradise, hosted by Nic from Dining with a Stud. I love tropical flavours and the combination of fresh pineapple and coconut is a favourite. Our weather is not very tropical at the moment but blasting the fruit with some heat from a kitchen blowtorch and adding a little fresh chilli to a coconut based broth gives this dessert a touch of tropical paradise.

The kitchen blowtorch is a very handy tool to have and I mostly use it for adding a thin crisp caramel coating to crème brûlées, browning some meats and fish, adding a touch of colour to meringue toppings, marshmallows and gratins! Also a great tool for lighting candles and if you are into food styling for photography then a kitchen blowtorch will come in useful!

Using the kitchen blowtorch to add a quick glaze of caramel over fruit and intensify its flavour couldn’t be simpler, especially when preparing a small amount. If I was entertaining a larger crowd I would use the grill. As coconut sugar is quite solid a looser sugar like muscavado is used for sprinkling over the pineapple before caramelizing. The sweet coconut broth can be made ahead and chilled but best to caramelize the pineapple before serving. If you are not a fan of pineapple, replace with bananas, which will be just as delicious!

Caramelized Pineapple with Chilli and Sweet Coconut Broth

Ingredients:

400ml coconut cream
1 lemongrass stalk, bruised
2 kaffir lime leaves
zest and juice of 1 lime
50g coconut sugar
1 ripe pineapple, cut lengthways into quarters, core and skin removed
muscavado sugar, for caramelizing
1 small red chilli, de-seeded and very finely chopped

How to make: Place the coconut milk, lemongrass, kaffir leaf, zest and juice of lime and coconut sugar into a saucepan. Gently bring the contents of the saucepan to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Turn down the heat and gently simmer for about five minutes. Remove from heat and cover the saucepan with a lid and leave the broth to infuse and cool completely. Discard the lemongrass and kaffir leaf.

Pat dry the pineapple with some kitchen paper. Sieve a light layer of brown sugar over the pineapple. Use the blow torch in a sweeping motion over the sugared pineapple to caramelize. Cut the pineapple into desired sized chunks and thread onto a wooden skewer.

Divide the broth into small bowls and scatter over a little fresh chilli, place the caramelized pineapple skewers over the bowl, serve immediately! Serves 4 to 6.

This post is part of the Sweet Australian Blog Hop, head over to Nic’s blog Dining with a Stud to see all the other delicious Tropical Paradise entries!

posts

A year gone by 2012

06/01/201306/01/2013 Moya

Already one week into the New Year… so please 2013 go slow! Looking back over the past twelve months there have been a few favourites on the Food and Tools blog! But first I would like to say a big thank you to all the readers, subscribers, viewers, also those that have liked and taken the time to comment on food and tools blog posts! Look forward to another years blogging with you all!

Favourites on Food and Tools

Meeting Happy Hens: On a visit to Ireland my lovely nieces introduced me to their Happy Hens, all very friendly and I was equally happy to eat their freshly laid eggs for breakfast every morning! Sadly, some months later a pine marten managed to enter the chicken coop during the night and kill every hen… I had never heard of a pine marten until then! After recovering from the shock and horror of witnessing such a scene, my sister bought some more hens… a few weeks later a buzzard hovering around swooped down and made off with one of their young bantam hens… it seems hens living in the countryside have their challenges!

Food Workshop: Meeting the lovely Silke Croppe, an artisan cheese maker and attending one of her cheese making courses at Corleggy in Ireland was such a lovely experience and a wonderful way to spend a day outdoors in the Irish countryside!

New Kitchen Jewellery: Apart from acquiring a yoghurt/cheese maker, my favourite baking tin for 2012… the muffins tin from Ikea, loving the tall shaped cupcakes and muffins!

Styling and Photography: Attending Meeta K Wolff’s two-day Food and Styling Workshop (day one – day two), hosted by Sally Prosser in Dubai was an event that I was glad not to have missed… and meeting Giorgio Locatelli… what a surprise!

New Cookbooks: Got to meet the lovely Suzanne Husseine and Ariana Bundy at book signing events at Words Bookstore and Cafe in Bahrain… adding new cookbooks to my collection, “When Suzanne Cooks” and “Pomegranates and Roses”! A signed copy of Bobby Chinn’s cookbook “Vietnamese Cooking” was a gift from a lovely friend! Lots of delicious mouthwatering recipes!

Travel: Traveled to Turkey for the first time, first visiting the charming town of Alacati (a blog post soon) for a couple of days and then to the bustling city of Istanbul! Definitely a place to visit again!

Farmers Market: Excited to have visited Bahrain’s first Farmers Market and pick up some lovely fresh vegetables and herbs, also good to know that it will be held every Saturday until next May!

Cheers to the year ahead… 2013!