Halva

Arabian recipe number two - one after the other, because I am on a kick and made them both on the same day (with a nice curry that Avanator will probably get around to before me!)

Halva is a kind of simple cake that goes well with tea and coffee and has a unique flaky texture you won't find anywhere else. There are many, many ways to make it - some households add nuts, beans and yams, others use tahini or special flour, others use honey. But just to start, if you never made it before, you'll need a simple recipe for your base. I'll leave the rest up to you from there!

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup rosewater
3-4 threads of saffron (or about 1/2 teaspoon of the ground up variety)
340 grams of tahini (pre-beaten)

Directions:

1) Boil sugar and water in a saucepan over medium heat.
2) Once sugar is dissolved, add saffron and rosewater. Remove from heat.
3) Add tahini and whisk carefully to fully integrate.
4) Next, spread it evenly on a platter. Add any decorations you would like on top at this time.
5) Cover and stick it in the fridge until it cools.
6) Serve by cutting it into wedges like fudge.

Tips:

* You can use a fork to make patterns in the top of the Halva for decorations before it cools, and they'll stay. You can also add decorative nuts and raisins on the top to your liking. Do all this after you pour the mixture into the platter and before you put it in the fridge.
* Rosewater can be bought at most specialty shops, but in case you can't find it, you can make it yourself. Just take a cup of fresh, clean rose petals (you can buy them from a flower shop if you need to),  pour two cups of boiling water on top, cover and steep until the water cools. Then use a strainer to remove the rose petals and squeeze them out, and voila, you have rose water left over.
* Remember that Lavender cheesecake I made for you guys last week? You can also easily use lavender in this recipe. But beware - lavender is like perfume. Don't add too much - a little goes a long way.

Hummus

I decided to post two easy middle-eastern recipes in order, because nothing beats the heat like food designed for people who know nothing but heat. Both recipes take less than 30 minutes and require little preparation.

This one is called Hummus, and is a great way to get kids to eat chick peas. I hated chick peas as a kid. But this is one way that beans don't taste like beans. You can use this as a dip for chips and crackers, for pita bread, raisin bread, vegetables, or (as a nice Turkish guy taught me) even to spread on kebob meat.

Ingredients:

2 cups canned chickpeas
1/4 cup tahini
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup virgin olive oil
3 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup water
salt
black pepper
paprika and parsley for decoration

Directions:

1) Gently brown garlic over low heat, being careful not to burn.
2) Blend garlic, chickpeas, tahini, olive oil and lemon juice in a blender until the consistency is smooth like a milkshake.
3) Add water, salt and pepper to the blender until it tastes just right.
4) transfer it to a tupperware or a covered dish and leave in the fridge overnight. Though you can serve it right away, hummus always tastes best the next day.

Tips:

* Hummus is often served with a dash of olive oil on the top. Other garnishes include black olives, cayenne pepper, and pine nuts.
* This dip keeps very well, so you can easily refrigerate it for a week or so and pull it out for those times you have the munchies.
* In Palestine, the tahini is replaced with yoghurt. So if you find yourself without tahini one day, substitute plain yoghurt and you'll be fine.
* Hummus is useful in vegetarian and vegan diets, and has tons of vitamin C, iron and vitamin B6. Fat is also all non-saturated, so this stuff won't make you fat like some other dips might.

Basic Ice Cream

I love the Japanese word "kufu." It means to "alter" or to "improvise." The best examples of this come from the kitchen - you might have a recipe that calls for apples, but you only have cherries, so you make the same recipe using cherries instead!

One super-easy recipe that calls for this creativity is ice cream. What? You've never made ice cream before? Why - because you don't have an ice-cream maker? Well, neither do I, and neither did the rest of the kitchens of the world until about 30 years ago - and they still had ice cream.

Ingredients:

1 cup milk
2 cups cream
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2-3 tablespoons of whatever you want to add to the ice cream

Suggestions:
* coffee (instant)
* vanilla (only need a teaspoon of this)
* lavender extract (remember how I told you how to make this?) or fresh lavender flowers
* chamomile or rose petals (fresh only!)
* instant cocoa
* cherries, strawberries, blueberries
* Mint
* Chocolate chips or M&Ms
* cinnamon (this too, only needs a teaspoon or so)

Directions:

1) Place a stainless steel bowl into the freezer. Make sure it is level.
2) Heat up the milk until scalding.
3) Add the cream and sugar.
4) Stir in whatever you want to add to the ice cream.
5) Carefully pour the mixture into the (now cool) steel bowl in the freezer. Close the freezer.
6) Leave for about 40 minutes, then go back to the freezer and whisk the mixture.
7) Whisk the mixture every 30-40 minutes until it is completely frozen. (Takes about 3-4 hours.)

And that's it! There are ice-creams that call for eggs, but this one is just a simple summer ice-cream, nothing fancy, and the easiest sweet in the world to "kufu."

Hungarian Eszterházy Torta (cake)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY To AVANATOR!!
(The other, more culinarily talented Californian sister who is posting on this yummy blog)

For today's birthday I have decided to make an Eszterházy Torta, another Victorian Era Hungarian delicacy of the layered variety. Although it looks at first glance similar to the Dobos, it is not - in fact it may be a little easier to make. It also happens to be my favourite of the two.

Ingredients (three part):

For the sponge layers:

* 5 egg whites
* 1 whole egg
* 210 grams of sugar
* 120 grams ground walnut
* 120 grams ground almond
* 50 grams flour
* 50 grams butter

For the cream filling:


* 4/5 cup milk
* 40 grams sugar
* 20 grams vanilla pudding powder (for cooking)
* 2 egg yolks
* 250 grams
* 1 cup of heavy cream
* 1 tbsp cognac
* 10 grams of gelatin
* 2/5 cup water

For the decoration:

* 80 grams sugar
* 1-2 tbsp lemon juice
* 10 grams melted cooking chocolate (black)
* 40 grams chopped almonds
* 3-4 tbsp apricot jam

Directions:

1) Beat the egg whites with the sugar until firm. All the ground walnut and almond, then slowly add the flour and finally the butter. The point is, you don't want to wreck your puffy egg whites, so add everything slowly.
2) Bake 1/6 of the batter in a round lightly buttered and floured baking tin (21 cm) at 180-200 degrees celcius for 3 minutes each. Watch them to make sure they do not burn. When they are done remove each layer and cool on pastry sheets.
3) While they cool, let's bake the filling. First, mix the pudding powder with the sugar, half of the milk, and the egg yolks.
4) Heat up the rest of the milk in a saucepan, then add the rest of the mixture to the saucepan. Once it has been heated, turn off the heat and let it cool.
5) While it cools, whip the heavy cream and set aside, and mix the gelatin with cold water and set aside.
6) Add the cognac to the (cooled down) filling from the saucepan, then gradually add the whipped cream and the gelatin.
7) Smear the filling on five of the six layers of cake, allowing the filling to run down the sides of the cake evenly.
8) Finally, we make the top frosting. First, add the sugar to about 3 tablespoons of water and boil for about two minutes in a small pan.  Take it off the stove and add lemon juice, then put the small pan in a larger pan full of cold water. Stir the mixture until the frosting turns white.
9) Spread a very thin layer of apricot jam on one side of the very top layer of cake... and then FLIP IT OVER onto the top of your cake. (You want a dry layer on top.)
10) Spread the fondant frosting over the top of the cake. Use the melted black chocolate to make designs on the top of the cake, and coat the outside of the cake with almonds.

Tips:

* This cake is creamy though a bit lighter than the Dobos Torta from last week. Both cakes go very well with after-dinner coffee.
* The layers are much easier to handle when cooled to room temperature. Especially the top layer flip.
* Do not use too much apricot jam - think of it like perfume, not like toast. If you add too much jam, the cake will be slippery and difficult to cut.

Hungarian Dobos Torta (cake!)

My Dobos Torta

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my sisters! I am going to post two variations on a style of uniquely Hungarian cake - first the traditional Dobos Torta, and then on my next sister's birthday.... (this month on the 12th) the similar-looking nut-based Eszterházy Torta. These are both Victorian Era cakes of high class and high quality.

First of all - DO NOT DESPAIR!!!! While I was learning to bake this cake a couple years back, I found that many people found it frustrating. The reason for this is that there are seven layers to this luxurious legend, and yes, if you won't properly cool and actually WATCH your cake then it will indeed collapse. This is not a pop-in-oven-and-leave recipe. However, it is a very fast recipe, because from the time you pull out your ingredients to the time it is complete, the cake takes less than 45 minutes to complete.

Ingredients (three-parts): Try to be as accurate as possible (this is why they are in grams)

For the sponge cake:
* 6 egg yolks, 6 egg whites (separated)
* 105 grams of sugar
* 53 grams powdered sugar
* 105 grams flour
* 35 grams melted butter

For the filling cream:

* 4 eggs
* 210 grams powdered sugar
* 17 grams vanilla sugar
* 12 1/2 tablespoons butter (1 1/2 sticks)
* 30 grams cocoa butter
* 35 grams melted baking chocolate (black)

For the top: 150 grams of sugar cubes

Directions:

1) Mix the sugar and yolks.
2) In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with the powdered sugar until they peak stiffly.
3) Mix the two carefully without damaging the egg whites, then gently add the flour and melted butter.
4) Pour 1/5 of the batter into a properly floured 21 cm round baking pan and bake at 180 degrees Celcius for 4-5 minutes. Watch it carefully so that is does not burn - it should be golden brown. When it is done, quickly remove it and place it on a pastry sheet to cool.
REPEAT THE ABOVE STEP SIX TIMES.

5) Next we make the cream (while the six layers are cooling). Warm up the eggs a little above room temperature, and beat with the powdered sugar and vanilla sugar until they cool down.
6) In a separate bowl, mix the butter, cocoa butter and melted black chocolate.
7) Mix the two together and then, smear the chocolate on the top of four of the sponge cake layers you had cooling. Layer one on top of the other while you do this, and allow the chocolate to evenly smear down the sides of the cake as well.
8) When you have the four layers done,  dust the sides gently with powdered sugar and place the cake in the fridge right away.

9) Finally, we make the infamous top layer. My version above has a different version of this, but...

Traditional recipe: 
First, we caramelize the sugar cubes. To do this we add about 3 tablespoons of water to the sugar cubes in a saucepan, and gradually melt the sugar over low heat. After the sugar has melted, we STOP STIRRING and let it simmer for 8-10 minutes until the sugar turns a deep golden brown.
10) Take the caramel of the heat and spread it over the final sheet of sponge cake. Let the caramel set for about 3 minutes until it holds its shape (but do NOT let it cool yet), then cut the layer into the desired number of slices (traditionally 16 pieces).
11) Place the pieces on the top of the cake, and once it has cooled, cut along the lines and serve.

or 10)  Take the caramel off the heat and drip it onto baking sheets, then wait for it to cool. Peel the hardened caramel chips off the paper and use to decorate the cake with the remaining frosting.
(pictured above)

Tips:
That wasn't so bad, was it? Practice makes perfect, however, and if you don't get it right, try, try again. I used to practice by making mini cakes until I felt confident enough to make a big one.

Gerbeaud Dobos Torta

* The traditional Gerbeaud design has squirts of chocolate buttercream holding the caramelized top on an angle. You can try that if you like (see right).
* Also, the traditional Gerbeaud has six layers, not five. Only use the six-layer recipe (which is the same except for dividing the batter) if you intend to cut REALLY BIG slices.
* Do NOT allow the caramel top to harden before you cut - for obvious reasons. You will not be able to cut it once it cools.
* Do not spread, smear, or stack while creams and cakes are piping hot. This seems to be the reason why these cakes collapse - this cake, aside from the baking itself, is meant to be dealt with at room temperature and served chilled.