Spinach quiche

To all you hikers that walked the "Maasmeander tour" today: Well done. You were with many. And the weather was super!

Today you could taste a Spinach quiche at 4Pure and I promised to blog the recipe today. Good luck with the baking and who knows: See you!

Ingredients:

• 300 grams spinach;
• sheets of puff pastry;
• salt and pepper;
• 50 mL crème fraiche;
• 100 gram Gouda;
• 3 eggs;
• nutmeg;
• 50 gram Gouda.

Preperation:

Grease the quiche tin. Line the tin with puff pastry. Wash the spinach en warm on low heat untill the vegetable has shrunk. Cut in large pieces. Mix the eggs, with the crème fraiche, pepper, salt and nutmeg. Add the spinach to this mixture. Cut the 100 grams of Gouda in small cubes and also add to the spinach-egg mixture. Mix thoroughly. Poor in the quiche-tin. Grate the 50 grams of Gouda and sprinkle on top. Bake the quiche 35 minutes in a pre-warmed oven at 200 degrees Celsius. 

Ffwd Coeur a la creme

This was something special for me. I've never heard of it before, but it was a dessert, so it could be very nice. I am a dessert girl. It took two small packages of cream cheese and cream. We don't have heavy cream in Holland, so I used half and half cream and followed the recipe. I also didn't have the molds (it's not a very common dessert here), so I used a plastic mold, which I could leave slightly open on the bottom and a cheese cloth. I think it did the thrick. The texture on my Coeur a la creme is the same as on the picture in Dories book. One down. Then for the taste. I liked it a lot. It has a thick creamy texture, and I think a lot of calories. Two down. I ate it with blue berries, they are quite healthy with lots of vitamin C. That's a great opposite to the calories and a healthy snack. Will I make it more often. I don't think my weight can handle this to often. But it was a great treat for valentines day and it did look great!!
 And as you can see, I do have my own copy of the book!!

If you like to see what the other Dorista's thought of it, check out:
http://www.frenchfridayswithdorie.com.

Shortbread the luxe

Last Friday my son and I were watching a 24 kitchen program called: Rudolphs bakery. In this episode Rudolph made shortbread the luxe.
My son, the one who likes to eat what I'm cooking but not the cooking itself, raised up and said: we have to make this one, and I'm helping!
That was an offer I couldn't refuse. So we made the recipe. It had a lot of waiting time. First we made Dulce de leche of condensed milk. Than we made shortbread with walnuts (the official recipe asked for peanuts, but with my allergy that is not a great option).
We topped the shortbread with the dulce the leche and put it in the refregerator and waited for a few hours.
Then we melted two sorts of chocolate. The first one consisted of Pure and milk chocolate and the second one was made of white chocolate.
The pure/milk chocolate was spread out over the dulce the leche. Then we took a spoon and made a few drops of white chocolate on top of the brown choclate. We took a stick and curved the white chocolate through the dark one to create a great pattern.

And then we waited again, and I can tell you this one was the worst waiting, because it looked so great.

But after a few hours we cut it up and tasted it: Yummie. This recipe didn't only look great on television, it tasted and smelled great in real life to.

I put a link in this post so you can read and see the recipe on 24 kitchen (only in Dutch, I'm sorry):
shortbread de luxe,

And this was our result (with a proud son):

Shortbread de luxe with a proud Marc

FFwD: Fresh Orange pork tenderlion

It's Friday again and we're back with French Fridays with Dorie. This week we made Fresh Orange Pork Tenderlion.
Tenderlion is one of our favourite meat dishes, so we've got high expectations about this one. And oranges are in season, so the taste is quite right. Maybe a new recipe for my tenderlion recipe collection?

This was a real quick recipe. It was made in about half an hour. We ate it with hash brown potatoes and green beans.
And the result:
I don't think that the oranges added enough to the tenderlion that it was a great recipe. It was allright but certainly not great. I like my tenderlion better with apple than with orange.

But the good news is: that's something I know from now on. I don't make my tenderlion with oranges again, not with this recipe anyway.

If you like to know if the others liked this recipe look at:
http://www.frenchfridayswithdorie.com

For the result:

Twd: focaccia

Yes, I'm too late. It isn't tuesday anymore. I had this bread planned on tuesday, and read the first part of the recipe. And stopped when it said for the second rise....
What I didn't expect was that after the second rise you had to put the dough in the refrigerator for 24 hours to get a focaccia. Never ever made a bread which had to rest in the refrigerator after the second rise. But I know better for the future!!
So I changed my menu for tuesday and we ate the focaccia a day later for dinner.
But I was glad I did wait the 24 hours to let the focaccia get it's taste. Boy it was good. A real nice structure and with the herbs on top it was delicious.

We ate it with a bit of fish and a salad. The focaccia was definitely the highlight.

What did I learn? Next time I start with the focaccia dough on time and make this post on time.
But it is a great bread to make and I'm sure I will make it again in the future!

If you want to know the recipe you can check it at our host-site this time:
Shamira has posted the recipe with her beautiful pictures on her site (link: tuesdays with dorie focaccia)

And for my result:

high tea

  

Yesterday I had a workshop high tea. I thought it would be nice to tea in vintage style. It looks so classy.

First the ladies entered and made the recipes. That was followed by the official high tea. The high tea dishes entered the table one by one. Off course there were different sorts of sandwiches, brownies, quiche and scones. And a few other sweets were made.

The ingredients that weren't made by the ladies were acquired from local suppliers. The bread and chocolates came from a local bakery. The tea came from a tea house a few kilometers from here. And the rest I got by my usual supplier the Landwinkel, which gets it's produce from farmers and small companies in the neighborhood.

The ladies were very enthusiastic and spread a lot of sunshine in the kitchen.

It was a great workshop.

Hereby a photo of the table styling (with help from my sister in law Danny):

TWD: french apple Tart

O gee. It's not a tuesday anymore. Guilty. I've been away from home a couple of days and forgotten to put this post in my blog list. And then it's a Sunday.

But I made the recipe so I thought I'm going to post it anyway. The recipe was good. The dough wasn't sweet and was filled with apple puree. In Holland we've got a tart that also got this puree which is called a appelflap. On top there was a nice circle of granny smith apples in a layer. A bit of butter was smeared on top and the tart was placed in the oven until the apples were ready and on the sides nice brown.

Was it the nicest apple tart I've ever tasted? No, but it is very nice though.  There are better Dutch apple pies. My husband had the same opinion. But that was no problem: we ate it anyway until the last crumb.

Now I'm going further with the preparation of a high tea workshop. Tomorrow a couple of ladies will make there own sweets, scones and sandwiches and eat it all while drinking tea.

My tea I've got from Bloesem Teahouse from Herpen, a village about 10 km from here. People who've got disabilities or want to learn for a career are working and learning in the Teahouse. 

A social and local tea. And very nice also, I can tell from my own experience!

When I think about it: it would be a great tea to go along with this tart.

When you want to make the tart, you can find the recipe on the site of our host:

http://www.kitchenlaw.blogspot.nl/2013/01/bwj-french-apple-tart.html