We finally found time to cook again my son and me. It's been a long time and we both missed it. But since he is going to kindergarten everything got a bit more complicated.

Inspiration came as usually from the brilliant " je sais cuisiner pour mes doudous"
Dinner was little black spiders and skulls. Shane did all the cooking by himself. I was only allowed to cut some sculls .

Cut little orange eyes from red cheese or carrots or...
Decorate black olives with the eyes.
Boil black noodles or spaghetti in plenty of salt water.
Cut out some dangerous things ( with a knife ) from puff pastry and bake in the oven for some minutes ( on 170° )
Drain the noodles and make little spiders ( with 8 legs ;-) ) with the olives and the pasta.
Decorate the table and invite some friends.

Now here comes a very secretrecipe ;-) Already when I was a child I loved to cook and bake and I had a very sweet tooth ! Ok maybe I still have . One of the very popular christmas presents I used to make for fathers and godfathers were truffes. Thing is once you made them you can not wrap them put them under the christmas tree, no you have to store them in the fridge till the day you can actually give them away. Problem is these truffes are so delicious that it happened more than once that I ate them all before christmas, which led to severe emergency operations...

This is probably also the moment to confess that my handwritten cookbook with the red flower binding soon got more important to me than my black mickey mouse diary.

Anyway, our ( the boys ) christmas presents this year were home made tea sachets with herb tea from our garden, but we did not have enough tea to so we made theses truffes for the men of our family. I wasn't sure if its just memories or if the truffes are really so delicious, I can tell you they are bloody great! Now that we are two who secretly steal the little chocolate things from the fridge it's a wonder any of them made it to the grandfathers and godfathers at all.

Both of them loved them so much that I promised to write down the recipe  - and now comes the real secret - the recipe comes out of the mentioned red handwritten recipe book but I very waggly remember having it from a betty bossy ( a very traditional swiss thing ) cookbook ( pssst* ! )

So her it comes:

Melt the chocolate in the bain marie.
Cream the butter . Add the icing sugar, the grand mariner and the egg yolk.
Add the chocolate and mix for 2 - 3 minutes.

Put into the fridge. When the mixture is cold form walnut sizes truffes. Turn them in icing sugar, cocoa powder or chocolate crumbles.

By the way these are the tea sachets we made - just in case you need some inspiration for next year ;-)

I did a bit of renovation in our ( rented ) apartment ( hope our landlord doesn't kick us out soon ).
I did the tiling myself - gave me a tremendous muscle ache but I'm very happy with it, even though I have to be even more precise if I ever want to do a floor with these cement tiles ... it's not finished yet we are also waiting for the painter to free us from these ugly abrasion walls and the wooden celling.
Any ideas how we could pimp our rather ugly kitchen covering?

I'm finally old enough to see it all coming, the days around xmas and new year were once again filled with dinner parties plenty of delicious food and as always a bit too much red wine. But this year I planned ahead ! While some were already out for these sometimes very dangerous company christmas dinners I made a night shift in the kitchen experimenting with something that should save me on these hangover mornings that were bound to follow - la rillete de maqueraux.

Rillete is something like a paté originally made with pork, the meat is salted heavily and cooked slowly in fat and then processed into a paste.
I came a cross fish rillete several times while traveling in france and always wanted to make my own version of it. As I said before it's the perfect hang over breakfast but it's also lovely served with toasted bread to accompany a soup dinner.

Slowly fry the shallots in butter. Add the Flesh of the mackerel and the chopped rosemary. Quench with the pernod, season with salt an pepper.

Cook for 2 minutes then take of the heat. Put into a food processor ( or blender) you want it to be soft enough to be spread on toast but not to mashy.
Add fresh lemon juice and the lemon zest. Add the chopped capers and some thyme leaves. Season with nutmeg and more salt and pepper is needed.

Fill into a glass and press it in tightly. Meanwhile make the clarified  and the spiced butter :

Melt the butter in a pan over a gentle heat, and then allow to simmer until you spot the first dark flecks – watch it carefully, or it will burn. Strain through some butter muslin, or two sheets of kitchen roll, into a jug.
Wipe out the pan, and pour in two-thirds of the butter. Add the lemon juice, nutmeg, pepper, anchovy paste or Gentleman's Relish and a pinch of salt and simmer very gently for five minutes, then take off the heat and allow to cool but not set.
When just warm, but still liquid, pour over the fish and put in the fridge to set. Once solid, pour over the remainder of the clarified butter and return to the fridge to set.

Serve on toasted brown bread. The rillete can be kept in the fridge for 2 weeks.
With this technique one can experiment I also made a white tuna rilette with plenty of chopped dill.
If this does not help to cure your hangover why not try something stronger like kevins favorite breakfast toast:

Happy 2012!

My favorite new christmas "cookie" are these honey stars.
They look nice, are just delicious and easy to make. All you need is a bit of patience.

Makes about 20 - 25

Melt the honey and cool down. Add the egg yolks and mix well. Mix flower, baking powder, baking soda and spices very well and fold that mixture into the honey mixture. On a flouured working surface : Knead the dough until it's smooth.
Wrap in cling film and chill for at least 24 hours.
Preheat the oven on 170°
Sprinkle the dough with with a little flour and place inbetween to sheets of baking paper. Roll out until the dough is 1- 1.5 cm thick.
Take off the top layer and cut out stars with a star or if your in the mood heats shaped cookie cutter , about 4.5 cm wide.
Bake for 12 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.
Store them in a airtight tin for about a week before covering them with tempered chocolate. ( The honey taste needs some time to really come out  ).

Make the tempered. Chop the chocolate finely, take two thirds of the chocolate and melt very gently in a heatproof bowl over a pan of war water-
making sure that the chocolate doesn't over heat. When it's melted and has reached 50° , add the rest of the chopped chocolate and mix until all the chocolate has melted. Heat again very gently back to 31°. Now it's ready to be used.
Decorate with a glossy paper.

This cookie and more delicious nordic christmas baking recipes can be found @foodmonthly

I love the time around christmas. For a short while it's seems there is no other task but cooking, eating , drinking and be together with friends. We cooked several christmas dinners this year, for family and friends ( luckily we've also been treated with some :-)  ).
The quintessence of all the cooking over these days probably is this recipe for scallops which kevin came up with. We probably made it 3 or 4 times this december, always variating a bit - so here is our final version, together with some coeur de sel christmas impressions :

Scallops served on breadcrumbs with thai basil:

Start with baking the garlic. Preheat the oven to 220° chop off the top of 2 whole garlics, place in a ovenproof dish, add some olive oil, salt and pepper and bake in the oven till soft ( 1- 1.5 hours).

Sweat the spring onions till soft. Season with salt.

Prepare the plates. Put some crumbs of a crisp bread on the plate. Spread some of the baked garlic on.
Lay the washed basil leaves on top ( approximately 6 per plate).

Fry the garlic and the chillie and the cumin seeds in some olive oil. Add the scallops and fry on each side for 2 minutes. Take out of the pan and place on top of the breadcrumbs.
Season with fresh lemon  juice, fleur de sel and ground black pepper.

Fast and delicious. This was one course of our christmas eve dinner.

Bring salt water to boil. Add the black noodle and cook according to the package instructions. Meanwhile quickly fry the crabmeat. Season with salt, pepper and a good dash of fresh lemon juice. Drain the noodles keep some of the pasta water, and but them back into the pan. Add the pasta water and the Pernod. Season with salt and pepper and heat again. Add the cream and mix well. Serve with the crabmeat on top and some bitter green salad leave for decoration.

I came up with an other variation of fish pie. This time with a Puff pastry and sliced potatoes. To me fish pie is the ultimate comfort food.

Lay out the dough and sprinkle with the chopped dill. Saute the onion add the fish and cook for 2-3 minutes. Season. Set aside. Meanwhile peel the patatoes and cut into fine slices. Boil in salty water for 1-2 minutes. Drain. Add the cream and season with slat, pepper and nutmeg.
Slice the fennel very finely.
Layer the pie starting with the fish followed by the fennel and the roughly chopped tarragon. End with the potatoes.
Bake in the oven ( 200 °) for 15 minutes or until the pie starts to turn golden.

Serve with a nice green salad.

Don't forget to make these little apple pies once in a while they are so easy and so delicious.