Tuesday, January 15, 2013

French toast

A breakfast dish, a midday snack or a dessert, French toast is a delicious treat for yourself at any time of the day. This time I will try to make my own twist on the classical french toast. The ingredients that you need for this are:

- 1 egg;
- 1 tbl spoon of brown sugar;
- 1 tbl spoon of regular white sugar;
- 2 tbsp of sour cream;
- a pinch of salt;
- a pinch of nutmeg (grounded);
- a pinch of cinnamon;
- a pinch of vanilla sugar;
- splash of milk;
- 4 slices of bread;
- a bit of olive oil.




To start with, crack the egg into a bowl and whisk it lightly,











Add all the dry ingredients an whisk them together







Add the sour cream and mix it in. If the mixture seem a bit too thick, add a splash of milk and combine them.










Take the slice of bread and put it into the mixture. Be sure to coat them well from both sides.






Then put the slices onto preheated frying pan and fry them from both sides until golden brown.




It should look something like this at the end.






To serve them up, I decided to try mixing 1 teaspoon of coco powder with 1 teaspoon of caster sugar, that I sprinkled over the toasts.


 This is the result! To my surprise, the coco powder and sugar mixture worked fantastically with toasts and it tasted deliciously! Feel free to try out this recipe, as it is simple, easy and fast!

Monday, January 14, 2013

Cooking, baking and other stuff

There is a lot to say when it comes to cooking - knowing all the spices that goes together, knowing the recipes for various dishes but what makes cooking so fun for me is the improvising. There is no greater joy in  a dish which is made with ingredients that you just throw into a bowl, mix with spices that You think could work together and in the end get a tasty food out of it. Sometimes you only need to go for salt and pepper, sometimes adding basil or thyme makes a huge difference. It`s all about trying out new stuff, and learning constantly. Yes, you will make mistakes, yes, sometimes you will run to the toilet because clearly the 'NEW IDEA' didn`t work out quite ass you thought... But by making these mistakes, you can become the chef of your kitchen and make something extraordinary.

This blog is meant to keep track of all the random things I cook in every day bases, to post my favorite recipes and also my stupid fails. But what it comes down, is for learning - learning to cook in a next level than just making the usual mashed potatoes with some boring sauce, or Sunday-morning pancakes. No, here nothing will be boring.

Four months ago I moved to Scotland to study Politics and Economics and as I started to live away from my parents, I started to cook more often. And to meet the small student budget, I could not find all the spices I wanted, for a reasonable prices. Sadly, they don`t have small packages, so while I`m back at home, I went to supermarket to stock up with some quite essential herbs and spices that you need to use.  Dried herbs, dried dill and basil, vanilla sugar etc. Those are the ingredients that you need to have on hand on daily basis to make the food more fun. 

Some of the things that I got for my cooking adventure:
Curry spice;
Turmeric;
Dried dill (it is quite difficult to find this in UK);
Dried basil;
Paprika powder;
Chili powder;
Baking powder;
Dried thyme;
Cumin;
Dried marjoram;
Grated Nutmeg;
Bay leaves;
Cloves;
Gelatin (this one doesn`t smell like soviet time glue as the one I got in Glasgow);
Vanilla sugar (yes, haven`t seen this bad boy there either, but very essential in baking).

This should cover everything for quite some time and leave a room to improvise with different combinations, however, I will not stop here and later on try to use something from their most common spices to make something brilliant. So stay tuned and keep on cookin`!