Today we celebrated our 70th dinner by cooking something we had never cooked before: Tandoori-style chicken along with raita, naan, rice and a chickpea salad.  We had eaten these foods in restaurants but wanted to recreate them at home.  Alex started the dinner Saturday before by chopping up a whole chicken and preparing the yogurt marinade for the chicken. And then we both finished the meal on Sunday night.  We loved it!

For the Tandoori-style chicken:

Max had test prep for his big high school entrance exam so I chopped up a whole chicken.  I was glad I had kitchen shears: they really helped.  Then I made a marinade out of plain yogurt, chopped garlic, chopped ginger and garam masala.  Garam masala is a blend of spices including pepper, cloves, cinnamon and cumin and is used a lot in Indian cooking. I definitely smelled cinnamon.  I squeezed lemon and salt on the cut up chicken and then spread the yogurt marinade on them.  The recipe said we could add red and yellow food coloring to make the chicken more tandoori-style orange, but we didn’t have any food coloring so we left it plain.  (We later bought food coloring and added it so the chicken looked more like traditional tandoori chicken).  I covered up the chicken tightly with plastic wrap and let it marinade over night in the fridge.  We cooked it Sunday night

This is what the marinading chicken looked like after we added the vegetable food coloring:

For the salad:

I wanted to make a salad that used some of the ingredients I had seen in the Indian cook book we used for the Tandoori-style chicken and I saw a lot of the recipes with chick peas in them.  So I decided to make a salad with spinach, crispy chick peas, tomatoes, goat cheese and papitas.  I love chick peas after they have been sauteed in olive oil and get crispy.  They are a great snack by themselves.

For the raita:

Raita is a yogurt cucumber dip that often accompanies spicy Indian food because it cools down your mouth.  Traditionally it is just yogurt and cucumber (and a few spices) but we like to add tomatoes as well.

For the naan (flat Indian bread): we bought that! We can’t make everything!

Tonight I (Alex) was really craving Swiss food so I decided to make a traditional Swiss meal.  Plus we had bought a “pre-made” Rosti in Switzerland that I wanted to try. I was worried it might not be good so I decided to make my own and have my brother and parents taste test them…it was a Rosti Challenge.  Max had late soccer practice so he couldn’t helped with the rosti but he did help with the grilled sausages.  The full meal was Rosti (potato/cheese pancakes), grilled bratwurst, and a spinach salad.  For dessert we had an improvised a pumpkin cheesecake made out out of 4 ingredients mom gave me:  canned pumpkin, cream cheese, frozen cinnamon rolls and walnuts.  It was fun to make and if you like cheesecake, pretty good.

The Rosti Challenge:

My Rosti had grated gruyere cheese, grated potato, panko bread crumbs and an egg.  I also added a little vegetable oil bind it.  Not sure what my competition (in the brown package) had since the ingredients were in German.

Even cooking them I had an idea which one I would like better (mine are the three smaller pancakes; my competition is the large square one: once I put it in the pan it just fell apart!).   And after I cooked them, it was clear mine were better! Anyone could see that the other “rosti” had just become fried potatoes.  Mine was the obvious winner (at least in my mind). [I (Max) agree: Alex’s were better because they were full of cheese and potatoes.  The packaged rosti tasted minerally and didn’t look like a rosti: it just ended up a pile of sauteed potatoes.]  Mom and Dad agreed with Max as well–I won the ROSTI CHALLENGE.

  vs.    

Here’s the rest of the meal:

For the dessert: I put the cinnamon rolls in the food processor and pulsed with a little butter to make a crust. I pressed that into muffin tins.  For the filling I combined the canned pumpkin with the cream cheese and added sugar, cinnamon and vanilla.  It seemed a little dense so I whipped cream and folded that into the batter.  Then I spooned the batter into the little tins.  I pulsed the walnuts in the food processor with some left over cinnamon rolls to make a topping and added a dab of whipped cream.  It was fun. I just don’t like cheese cake but if I did, I would have like this dessert.

Today we had hoped to go apple picking and celebrate fall with lots of apple-related cooking (like apple pie!) but it rained.  So we decided to cheer ourselves up by making cinnamon pastries.  This is a recipe that our grandma taught our mom as a way to use up extra pastry dough when you made a pie.  It’s really easy but so delicious.  Since we didn’t have any apples to make an apple pie, we had a full pie’s worth of pastry. (And you can always buy store-made pastry!)  The steps are simple…roll out the pastry dough, spread melted (or softened) butter on the pastry, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, roll up, slice and bake for 12-15 minutes at a 450 degree oven.  Be sure to check between 12 and 15 minutes because, depending on your oven, they can burn quickly…

These are just so cute! And easy! And delicious!

We weren’t sure what to call the soup we made because we made it up as we went along and used mostly left overs.  Mom had a party two nights ago and had a big vegetable platter that nobody ate. So we had left -over squash, carrots, broccoli and tomatoes, cucumbers (we only used the squash and the carrots in the soup; we made a Greek salad with the left-over tomatoes & cucumbers).  Then we had two pints of chicken broth frozen that we had made a couple of months ago and needed to use up.  We also had 1/2 head of kale and a chunk of hard parmesan cheese.  Finally we had 1/4 box fusilli that wasn’t enough for a full meal.  The only “new” thing we added were cannellini beans. Here’s a little trick for making any type of soup: put the ingredient that takes the longest to cook in first.

Here are the steps we took:

1. First chop up any of the vegetables you are going to use (this is called “mis en place”):

2. Thaw the chicken broth and add the vegetables that need to cook the longest (carrots here)

3. When the carrots are soft, and kale, pasta and chunk of cheese.

4. Add squash (it doesn’t take long too cook)

5. Simmer and right before you are ready to serve: Add the beans (they go last because they need the least time to cook).

For the salad: the same principles apply.  Chop everything you are going to put up in the salad first….then combine.  We used the cucumbers and tomatoes from the veggie platter and then olives and feta cheese that were left from a Middle-Eastern platter that mom had had at the party.  We felt super good about not wasting the food.

Tonight we wanted to have a dinner that highlighted the transition from summer to fall–and emphasized the best of both seasons.  So we used frozen strawberries and blueberries that we had picked during the summer to make delicious smoothies (summer).  For the main course we made a frittata that used the last of the zucchini from our garden (summer) and the first of the potatoes (fall).  We also added spinach and chunks of fresh mozzarella.  (Mom wanted us to use kale from our garden but since we don’t love kale as much as she does, we used spinach instead and make her crispy kale chips.)  We also served cold grilled steak sliced with bread and a home made pumpkin pie (definitely fall.)

It was a lot of fun and fall took over as we tried to eat outside and realized it was too cold (and so ate inside instead). Here is the full meal: frittata, steak sandwiches, berry smoothies and kale chips (behind the smoothie), with pie for dessert.

Here is what we did for the frittata:  The ingredients are pretty straight forward: zucchini, garlic, spinach, one baked potato, eggs, mozzarella cheese. The first step is to chop everything you need up–that’s called mis en place.

Then you sautee the garlic, zucchini, and spinach till its soft.  Then you add the chopped up pieces of potato. Since the potato is already cooked, it doesn’t need to sautee very long.  Then you add your eggs and drop in the pieces of mozzarella.  We let the egg mixture cook a little till the eggs were set and then we added grated parmesan on top for extra cheesiness. Then we put it in the broiler (on low) for about 5 minutes.  It puffs up beautifully, but keep an eye on it so you don’t burn the cheese on top:

The smoothies were straight forward: Add frozen blueberries, frozen strawberries, bananas, and a little yogurt. Blend and enjoy:

Pumpkin pie is so easy to make that you should never buy a pre-made one.  Seriously the worst cook in America could make a good pie. And the directions are on the can of pumpkin!

Here is what you do: First you combine canned pumpkin with egg:

Then you mix sugar with salt and your spices (typically cinnamon, cloves, ginger). Use a fork for this.

Then you combine the spice mixture with the pumpkin/egg mix; slowly mix in a can of evaporated milk, and then pour the whole mix into a pie shell. Bake for 15 minutes at 425 degrees; then reduce heat to 350 degrees for 45 minutes. And it’s done! But let it sit for 2 hours to set.

For dinner on Saturday we wanted to try a few new things.  First, Mom had talked about a nutella gelato recipe she had made for us (when we were too young to remember) so we wanted to try that.  Second, we wanted to try to cook a fish we had never cooked before, because we don’t cook much fish. And third, we wanted to take advantage of the amazing vegetables at the Farmer’s Market.   We were lucky because our Farmer’s Market also has a really good seafood selection.  So we bought fresh (dry) scallops, the last of the summer corn, great tomatoes and a few other things–eggs etc. Our menu was seared scallops over a spinach-orso-tomato-bacon salad, with corn-on-the-cob and plain orso on the side. For dessert (which we actually started WAY before dinner time), we made nutella gelato.  (We also seared some chicken along with the scallops just in case they didn’t turn out so well).

Here is: the full meal;a plated dish for mom; and the nutella gelato about to be scooped out of the ice cream maker.

We will add more “how-to” steps tomorrow, but Mom is making us go to bed now.  We did want to share the final plated dessert.  (We had made fudge brownies the day before, so we thought, what better combination than brownies with nutella gelato?) Oh and by the way, nutella gelato is so easy to make! Just make sure you cool the nutella-ice cream mis a lot before you put it in the ice cream mixer.

More details on the gelato……

The ingredients……

Whipping lots of egg yolks with sugar

Heating eggs, cream, milk and sugar..

Stirring in the nutella. (Dad said this looked like dirty soap water!!! But it didn’t taste that way)

Yum!

Sorry we haven’t posted for a while. We have been busy with the start of school and Max’s 13th birthday. But today we had off from school and were home while mom had to go to the office in the morning so we made her lunch when she came home (to check on us:). We made a zucchini-potato frittata, a tomato and mozzarella plate, a walnut-goat cheese-cranberry salad and a mug brownie. A mug brownie is a brownie you make in the microwave in a mug. They are delicious and especially good for kids because they don’t have turn on the oven.

For the frittata we used one medium zucchini sliced very thin, one clove if garlic, one left over baked potato, peeled and cubed, six eggs, a little milk and olive oil to sautee everything in. We also grated parmesan cheese on top.

The tomato mozzarella salad was very simple but the tomatoes are so good this time of year you dont have to do much.

The salad was simple too: just butter lettuce, goat cheese, walnut and cranberries.

We also cooked some left over pasta as a side.

For dessert, we made brownies in a mug. Our oven hasn’t been working properly but we were craving brownies. We researched microwave brownies and this recipe seemed pretty good. Of course we modified it a little to increase the fudgieness of it (because the unmodified recipe taste like cake), so we added more melted butter and put chocolate chips in the middle to melt into it.

Here are the steps for the mug brownie: melt 2 1/2 Tablespoons butter; add 2 Tablespoons water. Whisk. Add 2 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder. Whisk. Add 4 Tablespoons granulated sugar. Whisk. Add 4 Tablespoons Flour. Whisk. Pour half batter in mug. Add 1 teaspoon chocolate chips. Add remaining batter. Add 1 teaspoon chocolate chips to top. Cook in microwave 55-60 seconds.  LET COOL a little before trying…it will be hot (but yummy).

We are back in the U.S. and were craving barbecue so we made our favorite barbecued brisket (Alex started it on Friday night in the slow cooker so it cooked all night and then we drained the extra fat off and warmed it up for Saturday’s dinner.)  We have made brisket several times before but we were really craving it after eating lots of Swiss food so we made it again.

We also made corn-on-the-cob, arugula-goat cheese-tomato salad and blueberry crisp.   For the blueberry crisp we added extra sugar for extra sweet blueberries and an extra sweet topping (the blueberries were pretty tart).  For our salad, we tried using a different type of tomato – one large local tomato instead of our usual cherry tomatoes. Our friend Niki helped out. Although we had made these dishes before, it was more fun with a friend. Thanks, Nicolas.

Brisket:

Salad:

Blueberry Crisp:

Full meal:

We just spent the last four days in Lugano, Switzerland, exploring the city, visiting Lake Como in Italy, doing some hiking and eating a lot of great Swiss food that was really what we think of as Italian food.

It’s so amazing that you can drive three hours from Zurich in Switzerland (where everyone speaks German and the food is more robust, Germanic) to Lugano (where everyone speaks Italian and you can get great pizza, pasta, risotto and polenta) AND still be in the same country.

We loved Lugano. It’s a beautiful city with amazing food. Our two favorite restaurants were Cafe Argentina and La Tinera. Cafe Argentina is in the main square and is more casual with great pizza, pasta and salads. (We went there three of the four nights). Our favorites were the Estate pizza and the Cafe Argentina salad. Other great options were pasta bolognese and breaded chicken cutlet with fries:

Estate pizza: fresh tomatoes, arugula, fresh mozarella, parmesano cheese

Salad Argentina

The other restaurant, La Tinera, is a little more special. It specializes in cuisine from Ticino, which is also very much what we think of as Italian, but more on the Northern Italian side: polenta, risotto…. It is also a cool space, downstairs from the main square. It is not only downstairs but surrounded by huge wine barrels and racks of wine. It also serves as a more traditional type of restaurant instead of just pizza and pasta. The place seemed VERY authentic, a true hidden gem. It seemed as if most of the crowd was local, a good sign at any restaurant. We ordered polenta with fried eggs, risotto with mushrooms, pork cutlet with spaghetti and fresh raviolis. Everything was delicious but really the polenta with fried eggs was the best.

Polenta with fried eggs

Risotto with mushrooms

Mom and Dad also said the wine was really good (Alex had a sip or two:) and reasonable and they served it in traditional ceramic jars.

Today our parents picked us up from two weeks of Swiss Camp. (We were with about 40 other kids who, like us, are Swiss citizens who live outside of the US.) After an afternoon of hiking outside of Zurich, we were ready for a hearty Swiss meal. And we found it at Restaurant Swiss Chuchi! Here you can find all the traditional Swiss food…what you think about when you are skiing in the Alps — like fondue and raclette and rosti. And even though its August, that’s what we wanted. We ordered a moiete-moiete fondue (half gruyere and half vacheron), raclette (with all the fixings, including our favorite…small boiled potatoes) and the best raclette rosti (potato pancake) we have ever eaten. Mom and Dad ordered fendant, the traditional white wine that you drink with fondue.

Fondue

Rosti

Raclette machine