Aliens in Munich Botanical Garden

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Ras Malai

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Famous in India and Bengladesh, Ras Malai is a desert made of Ras (sweet milk sauce) and Malai (clotted cream with cardamom).

You can find the original recipe here

Gyoza — Japanese dumplings

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Almost every country has its own version of dumplings (raviolis, pierogi, varenyky, momo, knödel, ….).

This time, I tried the Japanese version, the Gyōza (Wikipedia), fried dumpling filled with veggies and meat.

I got some issues closing the dumpling due to the moisture of my garnish preparation, they were delicious though.

Ingredients

Dough

  • 200g of regular flour
  • 2 tbsp of sesame oil
  • 250mL of warm water

Garnish

  • 100g of minced meat
  • 100g of prawns
  • 4 heads of spring onion
  • 4 heads of garlic
  • small piece of ginger
  • 2 eggs
  • a small leek
  • sesame oil

Dipping sauce

  • Soy sauce
  • Rice vinegar

Preparation

The dough

Put all the ingredients in a big bowl and start mixing them until you get an homogeneous dough. Shape it as a ball and put it in the fridge.

The garnish

Mince the leek, the garlic and grate the ginger equally in two different bowls.

Cut the prawns in small pieces and mix them with your hands in one of the bowls. Do the same with the minced meat in the other one.

Add one egg in each bowl and mix again with your hands 🙂

The dumplings

Stretch the dough with a rolling pin in order to obtain a thin layer of 1-2mm.

Using a large biscuit cutter or a glass of water (around ø 8-10mm), cut the dough into circles.

Close the dumplings by joining opposite extremities (dip a finger in the water if needed to make them sticky) and get a half moon shape.

Put the meat/prawn mixture in the centre of each circle

Fold the closing part in order to make some pleats.

The cooking

Pour some sesame oil in a pan and start frying the dumplings on one side.

Once they get brownish, pour boiling water until half of the dumpling.

Close the pan with a lid and let them cook in steam.

Serve the Gyoza, grilled side up with some soy sauce mixed with rice vinegar.

Sources of inspiration

Halwa e Zardak — Afghani desert

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Desert from Afghanistan, sweet carrot pudding, “un délice!”.

Time

Preparation: 30 mins | Cooking: 3 to 6 h

Ingredients

  • 1 kg of carrots
  • 300 mL of milk
  • 50g of butter
  • 125g of sugar
  • 50g of raisins
  • a dozen of cardamom pods
  • 50g of pistachios
  • 50g of almond powder

Preparation

Cooking the carrots

Peel and grate the carrots as thin as possible then squeeze them to remove the moisture.

Start to melt the butter in a thick pot and fry the carrots for about 5 mins at high temperature.

Once they start to turn a little bit gold, add the milk and the sugar and decrease the temperature.

Cover the pot and let the carrot cook for 3 to 6 hours.

Adding the garnish

Put a table spoon of oil in a frying pan at medium temperature.

Add the raisins and fry them until they start to increase in size.

Add the pistachios and the almond powder and keep frying at low temperature for 5 mins.

In the mean time, crush the cardamom with a wood pestle.

Mix everything from the frying pan in the carrot pot and keep heating for 5 mins.

Add the cardamom in the preparation and stop heating.

The desert is better eaten warmed up.

 

Roquefort, pears and walnuts tart

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First entry of this blog, a sweet salty tart recipe. Pears and blue cheese “Roquefort” are going so well together.

Ingredients

For the dough

  • 200g of regular flour
  • 100g of butter
  • 1 egg
  • 3 tbsp of water
  • a pinch of salt
  • a quiche plate
  • baking paper

For the topping

  • 150g of Roquefort
  • 150mL of Crème fraîche
  • 3 eggs
  • 2 pears
  • 40g of walnuts
  • a pinch of pepper
  • a pinch of nutmeg

Time

  • Preparation: 45 mins
  • Baking: 30 mins

Recipe

The dough

Take out the butter 30

mins before to make it smoother. Cut it into small cube of 1cm.

Put the flour, the water, the egg and the salt in a large bowl and start to mix with a spoon. Then incorporate the butter cubes with your fingers one by one and knead the dough.

Continue until you get a homogeneous paste. Then make a ball out of it, wrap it in stretch film and let it cool in the fridge for about 1 hour.

Stretch the dough using a rolling pin (or your hands) in order to get a 2-3mm thickness.

Put the baking paper in your “quiche” plate and finally fit the dough in it, you can bend it a bit on the edge to get a t

hicker external part.

Pierce the dough with a fork so that the bottom part won’t inflate too much while baking.

 

The topping

Turn on your oven at 200°C (Thermostat 7).

Peal the pears and cut them into half a centimetre vertical thick slices. Don’t forget to remove the cores.

Place them on the dough one by one, one above the other in circle starting from the outer until the centre of the plate.

Spread the crushed nuts all around the plate together with the Roquefort in crumbles.

In a small bowl, beat the eggs and mix them with the crème fraîche and the pepper. Once you get a homogeneous liquid, spread it on the tart, you’ll probably need to swing the plate to spread equally the liquid.

Sprinkle some nutmeg powder (don’t forget that too much is dangerous for your health !).

Finally put the plate in the oven at 175°C (Thermostat 6) for 30-40 mins.