Vegetable flan, that’s the plan

Hi humans!

Yesterday, we celebrated Christmas, which for us means that my family on my father’s side gets together and have a massive potluck Christmas dinner. It’s tradition and there’s pretty much always the same things. But, since I no longer eat red meat and had found this awe-inspiring vegetable flan recipe, I decided to contribute with it as well as with the usual biscotti etc. And a vegetable flan it was, wow. Yummy, yummy, yummy, in our tummies. And, for once, I’m going to treat you with an actual picture! (Thanks, Dad! Both for taking the pic and for sending it to me :D)

Mmmm, look at that! And it tastes that good, trust me, in this case looks aren’t deceiving.

I did the pie case the evening before, so let’s start with that. Turn on the oven, 200°c or 180 fan. Sift 175g plain flour and a pinch of salt into a bowl. Cube 85g of butter, add to the bowl and rub in until it is all crumbly. Separately, mix one egg yolk with 1-2 tbsp of cold water then add it to the flour and bring the dough together, it will form clumps first, just keep at it. If it’s not happening add a pinch of a smidge of water and see if it helps, if not add one more. Just be careful, it’s amazing how much a tiny amount of water can do to the dough. If it gets too wet, compensate with flour.

Lightly dust a work surface and rolling pin with flour and roll out the pastry, line a flan tin with it. (The recipe says to roll a 26cm in diameter circle and a 19cm in diameter tin, however, mine weren’t. I had a bigger tin and the pastry didn’t end up a circle. Just make it big enough for your tin without being to thick, attempt to lift it without it breaking and then just press together any mend it. Ta-daa, a lined tin.) Prick the base with a fork and chill for 15min.

Lay a piece of foil in the pastry case, shiny side down, and weigh it down with dry rice, beans, or special ceramic weights, whatever you want/have. Bake it for 10 minutes. Then remove the weights and the foil and bake it for another 5 minutes. And leave to cool, the recipe tells you to let it cool for 10minutes, I let it cool and then plastic wrapped it and stored it in the fridge for the night.

Next up, the vegetables, that is 3 large carrots, 3 large parsnips, and 2-3 medium courgettes. Peel the veggies, yes, that includes the courgettes. Then, keep peeling! With the vegetable peeler cut the veggies into long, thin slices. The core of the veggies were too hard to peel so I ended up with square veggie sticks along with the slices. In a bowl, mix 120ml double cream, 2 large eggs (beaten), 50+grams of finely grated extra mature cheddar (turned out to be more like 75? 50 is minimum, OK?..), 1/2 tsp of Dijon mustard, 1/2tsp ground nutmeg (oh, ehm, just noticed, that the recipe says 1/4tsp nutmeg, but, ehm, 1/2 tsp worked just fine.), and 1/2tsp of shopped fresh thyme leaves. (Here, I made the tired and slightly stressed out mistake of thinking that when using dried I should use more, but, it’s actually reverse, i.e. more fresh than dried. My flan tasted a lot of thyme, but, that was lovely as well. So, what I’m saying here is, if you use dried thyme, then don’t use 1/2 tsp, maybe more like 1/4tsp?). Pour the mixture into the case.

Here, it’s useful to ask someone for a helping hand or two. I asked my brother, and somewhere along the way, I got the feeling that it had gone from being my masterpiece to his. Hmm. Anyway, you take a piece of each veggie, lay them on top of each other and roll into a tight spiral. Then you continue to add slices to the spiral, alternating as you go. Here, I rolled and held it together and my brother handed me slices. So, now you ask how come it could be his masterpiece, well, he was meticulous in the pairing up of and selection of pieces, and took enormous pride in it. Go him! Okay, when you have a roll about 5-6 cm in diameter, pick it up, aim for the center of the case and place it down. Keep rolling tightly. Somewhere along the way it went from a tight spiral to a not so tight or circular circle, but it still worked, and it both looked and tasted great anyways so don’t be too hard on yourself. Continue to add vegetables, if you push up some of the egg mixture and sort of smear it on the veggies it will help with holding them together. When you reach the edge, fill in gaps. Brush with some melted butter and place in the oven for 40 minutes or until golden, then serve.

Delicious! And, if you, like me, have leftover vegetable slices, you can quickly boil them in some water and you have scrumptious vegetable spaghetti! 😀

I did start out thinking that I had uncharacteristically followed a recipe to the letter and that this would be a straightforward, zero mishap, recipe for you to enjoy. But, it turns out, I’m still me! Delicious mishaps and all 😀

‘Til next time, enjoy a nice wintry vegetable dish!

The mysterious case of the disappearing Saffron Biscotti

People! Hi! 😀

First of all, let me just say, make tons because a bit more than half mysteriously disappears from the time they’ve entered the oven until they’re stored in a box. Second of all, that box, make sure it doesn’t have a false bottom and lid and sides and that it’s properly locked away, because the biscotti keep disappearing. It’s like how socks disappear in the washing, but on an extremely exaggerated rate. Extremely. Okay, so, warnings have been given. Beware.

Now, don’t be scared, the disappearing biscotti mystery aside, they are so freakishly easy to make, but looks and sounds like they aren’t. Which means that practically everyone gets massively impressed when you ask if they want some home-made biscottis, biscotties, biscottoes? Biscotti.

As it is Christmas season (YIPPIE!!! HURRAY!!! FINALLY!!! This should be no surprise to people who have caught a snippet of my ringtone the past 3 years(?), which still is an instrumental version of “sleigh bells”. I LOVE CHRISTMAS. And, just to let this parenthesis go on a bit more, let me just tell you that having a Christmas tune for a ring tone is extremely effective, because post-Christmas from when most sane people are sick of it until right about now, I do everything in my power to answer before people realize what tune it is, getting some undeserved looks and giggles if they do. But spread the joy, Christmas tunes are cozy and joyous. And if they smile, then just know that you put a smile on someone else’s face and that’s great!) Sorry, I do realize I’m actually sort of mid-sentence, there is a start somewhere before the beginning of the over-extended parenthesis. For both our sakes, I’m going to go ahead and restart this whole paragraph in the next one, let me just scroll up and see what it was. Okay.

As it is Christmas season, I made Saffron biscotti instead of normal ones. And, I’ve lost my train of thought, so I’m going to go ahead and start the recipe that you’ve by now started wondering if it would ever appear. You and me both.

Turn on the oven, 175 degrees. That’s step one. And since I always forget to take out the baking trays and line them with paper before I’ve got one hand covered in the dough and have to balance the bowl with the dough on my hip as I try to fix everything without the dough ending up on the floor, I’m going to tell you, do that now, take out trays, 2 of them, line them with baking paper. Phew. Potential disaster averted.

Melt 100g of butter in a pot. Measure up 1,5 dl caster sugar. Lightly crush 0,5g of saffron along with some of the sugar. My mom taught me to use sugar cubes when crushing saffron, when the cubes have turned into caster sugar the saffron is lightly crushed. Tadaa! Mix the saffron with the butter, pour into a bowl and let it cool.

Mix in 2 eggs and the rest of the sugar. Mix 5 dl of flour with 1 tsp of baking powder. Lightly chop 1,5 dl of almonds, and let me tell you, when a recipe tells me to lightly chop something, I take it very literally. I measure up the almonds pour them out on a chopping board, pick up a knife and chop until most of the almonds at least have some sort of trace of being touched by the knife, not necessarily cut, but grazed, and not all but most.

To the saffron mixture, add the almonds and the flour mixture. The dough is very soft and sticky. The original recipe will tell you to divide the dough into 4 pieces and roll them to the length of the baking trays. But most of the times, the dough have not been roll-able, a definite lack of roll-ability. So, I’ll tell you to sort of aim for a quarter of the dough, scrape it of your hand onto the lined tray and then squish/drag it out into the shape of the imagined roll and repeat until you have the 4 “rolls”.

Bake in the oven for about 15 min and then let them cool somewhat. While the oven cools down to 100 degrees, because you have now told it to do that and I have now told you to do that.

Cut each length into slices, if you do it somewhat diagonally like the traditional biscotti they turn out a bit longer, but there’s no need. At this stage, the ends tend to magically disappear, biscotti have no end bits, right? Put the sliced biscotti back on the lined tray with one of the cut surfaces facing upwards.

Dry in the oven for at least 1 hour, or until they are dry. During the drying process biscotti systematically disappears, some claim that it has to do with checking if they are dry yet, some claim that that never happened. At some point, flip them around so the other side is facing up. Let the oven door be slightly ajar. If you want to really dry them out you can leave them in the oven, turn it down to 30ish degrees, and leave them overnight with the door ajar. Drying them out properly will make them keep longer, but they never last long enough for that to be a problem.

That’s it. Store them in a paper bag or a tin so they don’t go soft.

Enjoy, or maybe you already have? 😛

‘Til next time, have some delicious, easy to make, biscotti!