Aubergine Mashed Potatoes

A couple weeks ago I posted a recipe for creamy dairy-free mash that used baba ghanush, coconut and rice milk. My kitchen has since then run out of these ingredients so I had to find a way to adapt my recipe again.
I’m a massive fan of aubergines both for their taste and their texture, and adding them to mash substituted for butter quite nicely!

Aubergine Mashed Potatoes
For 1

5-6 small potatoes, variety for boiling or mash.
1 egg yolk (optional)
1/4 Aubergine
1-2 garlic cloves
2 tsp olive oil
Salt, pepper, chilli, spices to taste.

Boil the potatoes until very soft, then mash. I like to leave the skin both because I like the texture and taste, and out of laziness.
Heat the olive oil in a deep pan and add the garlic. Once it has browned a little, add the finely diced aubergine. Leave on low-medium heat until the aubergine softens, adding water/olive oil if necessary to avoid sticking to the pan.
Once the aubergine is nice and creamy, add it to the potatoes along with the egg yolk (it makes the mash a bit thicker, so it’s optional) and season. Mash it all up and enjoy!

I think I like this version even better than the other one because you can taste the aubergine a lot more, and there is more variation in textures! And it’s got a pretty neutral flavour nonetheless, which means it can be paired with pretty much anything.

Bon appétit!

Butter & Gluten free Hazelnut cake

This cake is adapted from my mum’s walnut cake, and is pretty damn awesome. She makes it with walnuts and a coffee icing, and while it is amazingly wonderful I wanted to find a way to add chocolate to the mix, because you can never have too much chocolate. And I used hazelnuts because that’s what I had in the kitchen, but I’m quite happy with the result! Apparently I’m not the only one to like it, when I made it for a friend’s party the other day one of the guests took a bite and melted. He said it reminded him of the special birthday cake his German mother has made him for the past 36 years, and that he only gets once a year. It is always said that the truest way to a land heart is through their stomach, but I’d never seen it happen in such a litter and non-romantic way until then. It was pretty awesome.

On top of this, the cake has no butter or flour so anyone can eat it, and it is completely gluten free! Unless of course there is a nut allergy involved, but that goes without saying. It’s not however entirely guilt free because nuts are full of oil, however these are good, healthy and necessary oils so no matter how you look at it it’s healthier than your basic brownie. And it’s incredibly simple to make.

Hazelnut cake
Serves 6

4 eggs
190g sugar
180g hazelnuts, chopped
2 tbsp rhum
1 fat pinch chilli powder (optional)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp instant coffee
80g melted dark chocolate
1 pinch salt

Heat the oven to 150•C

Separate the whites from the yolks, and beat the egg yolks with the sugar and the rhum until it turns white and fluffy. Add the hazelnuts, chilli and cinnamon, mix well. The batter will look like a chunky and sticky paste at this point.

Whisk the egg whites with the salt until hard (can turn the bowl upside down and they stick to it), then fold into the other ingredients. Fold in the melted chocolate, it doesn’t have to be uniformly mixed in so it creates a marbré effect.

Butter and flower a cake pan (it does not rise very much), then pour in the batter and place in the oven for 45mn, or until a knife comes out clean.
Remove the cake from the pan and leave to cool on a cooling rack, it is better cool than warm!

Bon appétit!

Pretty hair through food, quite literally.

I have pretty long hair, and it is a hassle to maintain healthy from root to end. I especially have a hard time with split ends, but would like to avoid buying ridiculously expensive and mildly effective treatments (or hairdressers).

This combo I found did wonders on my split ends and gave my hair a nice, healthy lustre- but it was sticky!
Honey repairs split ends, the olive oil nourishes it, lemon juice lightens the tips and the vinegar makes it shine. Tweak depending on your hair type and needs, but this worked for my long, fine, wavy, blond-dyed-auburn hair.

3tbsp olive or coconut oil
2tbsp liquid honey
1tsp red vinegar
A few drops of lemon juice.

Apply to dry hair, wrap your head in cellophane (or a towel) and go to bed. Wash a couple times in the morning, until it all comes out.

You can also use mashed avocado or banana In a treatment on damp clean hair, in combination with some of these ingredients or on their own.

Dairy-free Creamy Mashed Potatoes

Determined to find a way to make my favourites compatible with my seemingly never-ending list of food restrictions, I decided to find a new recipe for one of the things I love most: mashed potatoes. If I could make it lighter in the process, then all the better. Because let’s face it, the best thing about mash is its creamyness and that is achieved through profuse use of butter and cream. Lets try to avoid that.

Since sweet potato tends to be softer than normal potatoes, I added one (also because that’s all I had) to the mash, which gave it a subtly sweet flavour. And now for a small rant against all things organic. In itself, organic produce is a great idea. All the ethics and thoughts that have been put into to it are generally flawless. And as a bonus, the vegetables tend to taste better too, so I really cannot complain. except for one thing. WHY is it that when I want to use organic potatoes I end up with half a field of dirt in my kitchen, especially when said potatoes come in a net. WHY. Now I understand saving water is important and manual or mechanical labour to clean potatoes is unnecessary, but I’m sure something can be done so we don’t end up with enough sand to build a castle on the kitchen top. Even if it’s just lightly shaking them. I’m sure they’re transported in a truck at some point along the chain of produce, whoever/whatever puts the damned potatoes in this truck really shouldn’t feel obliged to add an extra couple of shovels of dirt on top to make them authentically organic. Sweet potatoes don’t come with enough dirt to grow in so I cannot see why normal potatoes should. End of rant.

Mashed Potatoes

• 4 big potatoes
• 1 small sweet potato
• 1-2 tbsp baba ghanush
• 1/2cup rice milk
• 2tbsp coconut cream powder
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 small red onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 1tsp oilve oil
• 3 fat pinches of salt
• 2 sprigs fresh rosemary
• Pepper, nutmeg and chilli to taste

Place the coconut cream powder in a large pot full of salted water with the peeled and chopped potatoes and sweet potato, with 1 spriig of rosemary. Cook until very soft.

Heat the olive oil in a pan, and cook the oinion with the garlic and rosemary, these all have to be very finely chopped because whatever size they are in the pan is the size they’ll be in the mash.

When the potatoes are cooked, dram and mash them. Add the rice milk and baba ghanush until you achieve the desired consistency. Add the egg yolk and onion mix, and season until satisfied. Voilà.

Bon appétit!

Mind vs Body, the perpetual sabotage.

Being celiac and lactose intolerant, I thought I’d hit bull’s eye with food related inconveniences when I decided to go vegan for a few months each year. The logic was that I already barely ate meat and would tend to avoid it as much as possible anyways so it wasn’t that big of a setp to jump. Although meat is essential to our diet, we don’t need to eat it every day when leading a sedentary life style, especiallt considering the plethora of other protein-filled foods out there. Being lactose-free meant that all dairy products were de facto excluded from my diet, so all I would really be cutting out were the eggs in order to be vegan. First time I tried this was because someone had bet I wouldn’t be able to do it, so I naturally went with it for the sole reason of proving them wrong. It went pretty well. I was a bit tired, but maintained my protein intake healthy through lots (and lots) of tofu ans soya, and coffee kept me going. A couple of weeks ago I decided to give it another shot, having since found out that I am also intolerant to coffee. As a student, this has proven to be problematic especially during exam and cram periods. I tried caffeine pills, energy drinks and tea, but nothing does the trick quite as well as coffee. Caffeine pills will have me bouncing off the walls hysterically and buzzing too much to think, energy drinks keep me awake but do nothing for productivity, and tea just made me sleep. So I eat healthy, do sports and eat lots of apples in order to stay awake.

This vegan-time round would’ve been similar to my previous ones if I had not found out yesterday that on top of all of the things I already knew I couldn’t eat, I’m also soya intolerant and can’t digest processed grains. At all. Now THAT was a set back. I’m forced to give up this vegan streak (which I’m ultimately not too bothered by) but this implies so many more restrictions on my already very carefully watched diet. And I can’t help but find it unfair….

These past 6 months have definitely been a battle against my body, who despite my attempts to treat and feed well seems to keep going against me, first through spontaneous and pretty inexplicatble injuries and now this. My constantly injured feet/ankles/knees prevent from doing much of anything, and now I have no freedom in the ways in which I feed myself. The amount of things I’m intolerant to is a definite hit to my spirit and happiness (especially when combined with the lack of endorphins from lack of sports), especially as I try to reconstruct a previously… complicated relationship with food and my body.

But I guess this forces inventivity, so I went and made me-compatible mashed potatoes.

Bitterness & Salt

If a dish- even sweet- is too bitter, add a pinch of salt. This cancels out the bitterness and brings out the sweetness of the flavours you are using. This works in a strongly brewed cup of coffee, too!

-Khymos

Guilt free Creamy Chilli Chocolate Ice Cream

Chilli Chocolate Ice Cream

Again, something banana based. Bananas are something I always have in the kitchen, they’re great no matter what stage of ripeness they are at. They’re perfect as a snack and once they reach the other side of ripe, they work magnificently in any muffin, cookie or cake form. And with the help of a freezer they can last pretty much indefinitely. But the true wonder of bananas is that when you blend them from frozen they get a beautiful creamy texture, quite close to gelato!

My favorite chocolate has to be Lindt Chilli Chocolate. As Chocosophy perfectly puts it “The sweet-dark chocolate on your tongue serves as a foil for the delicious burn of the chilli that you feel at the back of your throat.” There is something magnificently sexy and sensual about it, and the first time I tried chilli chocolate ice cream I thought that life pretty much couldn’t get better than that, and although I am slightly more reserved about that statement today I still find it fantastic. This recipe is a Chilli Chocolate adaptation of the one ingredient creamy ice cream. And despite it feeling very rich and creamy, it is completely gluten, dairy, and guilt free.

Creamy Chilli Chocolate Ice Cream

• 6 ripe bananas
• 2 tbsp cocoa
• 1 tsp coffee
• 1-2 tsp honey
• 1/2 tsp chilli flakes

Pure banana

Freeze the bananas, and once they are hard peel them and cut into small pieces. Chuck them in a blender or a food processor, scraping down the sides when they get stuck. Once they have reached the desired creamy texture, transfer them into a blowl and fold in the rest of the ingredients. Re-freeze for an hour if necessary, and enjoy. Voilà.

 

The base is just bananas, so you can play around with flavours and different combinations, peanut butter- chocolate or peanut butter-cinnamon work really nicely!and if you feel you’ve added too much coffee and it tastes a little bitter, and a pinch of salt. This cancels out bitternes and brings out the sweetness of the flavours.

Bon appétit!

Guilt free Banana & Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Banana & Chocolate Chip Pancake

Bananas are easily ma favorite baking ingedient. They’re healthy, tasty, they go with everything, replace pretty much anything and always add to the texture of whay you’re making. When I found this recipe for two-ingredient banana pankaces I got very excited and couldn’t wait to try it out, enough to get me out of bed and into the kitchen at 8.30 this morning.

They turned out to be pretty good, but the taste was quite eggy so I added chocolate because chocolate makes everything better. The result was pretty awesome, and they are rediculously simple to make!

Banana & Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Chocolate chocolate chocolate

• 1 ripe banana
• 2 eggs
• 1tbsp cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp instant coffee
• 1tsp honey
• 15g dark chocolate chunks or chocolate chips

 

Mash up the banana and mix in all of the other ingredients. I generally prefer to use dark chocolate that I cut into chunks when baking because I like those better than chips and can control the size of them, but either work.

Drop onto a well greased (or cooking sprayed) pan at low-medium heat, cook for +/-40 seconds, flip, and serve.

 

Bon appétit!

Spinach and Coconut Noodles

Spinach and Coconut Noodles

Easily one of the simplest yet tasy meals around! I used frozen spinach, 2/3 chopped with cream and 1/3 plain spinach leaves, because that is what I had in the freezer this morning. Full leaves work too, but chop them before cooking otherwise you wont get a nice creamy texture. And I used rice noodles becaue they’re gluten free, but this would also probably work nicely with brown rice.

Spinach and Coconut Noodles

• 150g frozen spinach
• 80g rice noodle, medium size
• 3tbsp coconut cream powder
• 1tsp curry powder
• salt to taste

Melt the spinach in a pot (with water if it is spinach leaves, without if it is spinach & cream). Put the coconut cream powder in another pot, add water, and cook the noodles in it. When everything is cooked, drain the noodles (and the spinach if you had added water) mix the two, add the salt and curry powder and serve. Simple!

Bon appétit!

Rice with Spinach and Tofu cream

My flatmate has just surprised me with dinner, and made one of the best under 15mn meals I have had in a long time, if not ever. It was already underway when I arrived in the kitchen so I don’t know what proportions she used, and she says she does it all by ear so was unable to give me precise details. I know that she used:

• 1 block of smoked tofu (+/- 200g)
• 300g boiled spinach
• long grain rice
• yellow curry powder
• olive oil

Since she was complaining about its lack of salt, I’m going to take a wild guess and say salt goes into it, too, but then again she tends to have a heavy hand when it comes to salt. I thought it tasted fine. She got this recipe by replicating her favourite dish in her favourite indian restaurant in Berlin, somewhere in Kreuzberg. It is a dish of rice, flavoured with yellow curry, and I thought I sensed a hint of cinnamon but she said there isn’t any unless our other flatmate added it to the curry powder, which is quite frankly a possibility. This rice is accompanied by a cream made from just spinach and tofu (and olive oil, my flatmate is italian), and is creamy, thick and fluffy. I don’t know if it’s the tofu that give it that consistency once blended, I’ve never gotten anything like that out of spinach before.           So from what I understood, here is how the recipe goes:

Boil the rice in a large pot of water at medium heat, with curry powder (and cinnamon?) in the water.

Boil the spinach. I think she used frozen chopped leaves and tossed them in a pot of water with curry and salt. I guess the amount of spices used depends on taste. I would definitely put a little cinnamon and nutmeg along with the curry in the rice water, and maybe cardamom.

Cut up the tofu into small pieces chuck them in the blender. We have a hand-held blender so she used that, but I guess it can work in a normal kitchen blender too, although that would probably come out less like a puree and more like a cream. Drain the spinach and blend in with the tofu until it reaches a uniform colour and is quite thick, closer to puree than cream. Add olive oil (about 1-2 tbsp) for texture. Drain the rice and serve side by side on a plate, eat with chopsticks.

I’m going to investigate both how this is actually made and the restaurant from whence it came, it was fantastic!

The restaurant is the Tibet Haus in Kreuzberg and does magnificent and rediculously cheap Tibetan/Himalayan food.

Bon appétit et bonne chance!