Falafel

Falafel is very popular in the Middle East as a fast food. Vendors sell it on the street corners in Cairo. As a main dish, it is served as a sandwich, stuffed in pita bread with lettuce, tomatoes, and tahini. As an appetizer, it is served on a salad, or with hummus and tahini. Falafel is a favorite among vegetarians.

In Egypt, McDonald's has their version of a falafel sandwich. Can you guess the name? McFalafel, of course.


Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hours, 45 minutes
Ingredients:
• 1 cup dried chickpeas
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 3 tablespoons of fresh parsley, chopped
• 1 teaspoon coriander
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 2 tablespoons flour
• Salt
• Pepper
• Oil for frying
Preparation:
Place dried chickpeas in a bowl, covering with cold water. Allow to soak overnight. Omit this step if using canned beans.

Drain chickpeas, and place in pan with fresh water, and bring to a boil.

Allow to boil for 5 minutes, then let simmer on low for about an hour.

Drain and allow to cool for 15 minutes.

Combine chickpeas, garlic, onion, coriander, cumin, salt and pepper (to taste) in medium bowl. Add flour.

Mash chickpeas, ensuring to mix ingredients together. Mash it with your hands instead of a food processor; it gives it a much better texture. You want the result to be a thick paste.

Form the mixture into small balls, about the size of a ping pong ball. Slightly flatten.

Fry in 2 inches of oil at 350 degrees until golden brown (5-7 minutes).

Serve hot.

Serving Suggestion
Falafel can be served as an appetizer with hummus and tahini, or as a main course. Stuff pita bread with falafel, lettuce, tomatoes, tahini, salt and pepper. As an alternative, falafel can be formed into patties and served like a burger.

Chocolate Brownies

Indgredients:
50g (2 oz) cocoa powder
200g (7oz) flour
250g (80z) soft margarine
300 g (4oz) caster sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
50 g (2oz) walnuts chopped


Instructions:
-Preheat the oven to 200 ºC
-Mix the cocoa powder with the flour
-Cream the margarine with the sugar, then beat the eggs and vanilla adding a litte flour mixture with each addition.
-Fold in remaining mixture and the nuts.
-Spread the mixture into a grassed mold.
-Bake for 20-30 minutes the cake should be slightly under cooked but just firm in the center. Cool before slicing into bars.

MARIA LUISA CAKE

Ingredients:
1 cup margarine 1 teaspoon baking powder
1 ½ cups sugar 1 spoonful vanilla essence
6 eggs 2 spoonful wine
1 ½ cups flour 4 spoonful milk
Preparation:
Beat the margarine and the sugar until form a cream. Add the eggs one by one, beating very well. Add the rest of the ingredients and beat again. Spread the mixture in three greased and floured molds and bake in the preheated oven to 350° during 25 minutes. Join the cakes with fruit marmalade and sprinkle with sugar.

Shumai

Ingredients:
1/2 pound ground pork
1/2 tsp salt
1 small onion
1/2 tbsp grated fresh ginger
2 tbsp potato starch
20 shumai wrappers
1/4 tsp pepper

Directions:
Chop onion well.
Put the finely chopped onion and pork in a bowl.
Add salt and pepper in the bowl and mix well by hands.
Add potato starch and ginger in the meat mixture.
Put a spoonful of the meat in the center of a shumai wrapper.
Fold the four corners of the wrapper up and make a small ball.
Heat a steamer.
Steam shumai dumpling on high heat for 15 minutes.
Serve sumai with soysauce and karashi mustard.
*Makes 4 servings.
Video Shumai

Tarte tatin

Preparation Time: 30 minutes
Cooking Time: about 1 hour 20 minutes

Ingredients:

1 1/2 lbs. Firm Apples
2/3 cup Granulated Sugar
3 oz. Butter (room temperature)
Butter for baking dish
A little Lemon Juice
Crust: We have included a wonderful crust recipe, at the end of the tatin instructions. However, if you don't want to make your own pie crust, just use a good pre-made one!

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 180ºC
1. Peel apples and lightly coat with lemon juice, so that they don't brown.
2. Put sugar and 3 tbsp. water in a pot and let caramelize.
How to caramelize? Let sugar melt into water on a very low flame. Once melted, turn up the flame a bit, don't stir, but tilt the pot and move it around from time to time. Once the syrup has a pale honey color, you can stop, it's caramelized. If you want a darker caramel, just be careful that you don't let it burn.
3. Add butter to caramel and stir until it melts. Take off heat and pour caramel into a buttered pie dish.
4. Cut apples into halves. Cut each half into three even pieces. Place apples in pie dish, so that they are squeezed tightly together. You want to do this step as quickly as possible, so that the caramel doesn't harden too much. If you want, you can begin slicing apples while you are making the caramel. Just be careful to check caramel, so that it doesn't burn.
5. Bake for 40 - 45 minutes. During this time you can prepare the crust, then roll it out so that it is a drop larger than your pie dish, and refrigerate it for 30 minutes. Even if you are using a pre-made crust, you still want to spread it out to the right size, and then refrigerate for 30 minutes.
6. Take tatin out of oven, and let apples cool off a bit. Once cooled, place crust on top, tuck the edges into the dish, and bake for 30 minutes or until crust has browned.
7. Remove from oven and let cool. Then, place a serving dish on top of the tarte and carefully flip over, so that the apples are facing up.
8. Serve warm, with crème fraîche (or vanilla ice-cream) on the side.
Voilà!

Tip:

You can make your tatin ahead of time, just make sure that you place it on a dish that can go back in the oven, so that you can warm it up right before serving. You can serve it cold, but it does lose some of its charm!

Delicious Crust Recipe

This lovely crust is easy to make and will perfectly accompany all of your tatins! You can also use this recipe for any other tarte or pie that you like to make. It stays fresh in the freezer for 3 months (defrost overnight in fridge), so make larger quantities and save time later on!

Ingredients for 1 Crust:

11/3 cup Flour
2 Eggs
4 oz. Butter (chilled!)
1 tbsp. Granulated Sugar
Pinch of Salt

How to Make Crust:

1. Mix salt, sugar, and flour.
2. Cut chilled butter into small pieces and mix into flour with finger tips. Stop working batter once it looks like "sand".
3. Make a well and pour in eggs. Incorporate into flour using your fingers and a spatula.
4. Once homogenous, form a ball, place on a floured surface and knead for 10 seconds. Reshape into a ball, roll out with a rolling pin, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Voilà!

Video:Tarte tatin

Mexican Burritos

Burritos are made with flour tortillas and originate from Northern Mexica.In Souhtern Mexico,tacos made with corn tortillas are more popular. In fact,the primary difference between burritos and tacos is simply the type of tortilla encases the filling : wheat os corn .

- Warm tortillas.Place filling of choise in bottom third of the tortilla.

- Fold flap over filling,bring edges in.

- Fold over until no flap remains.

- Warm and serve.


video: mexican burritos

GUACAMOLE

Ingredients:

3-4 ripe avocados
1-2 minced garlic cloves
1/4 c. lemon juice
2 tbsp. minced chives
1 small tomato – cubed
salt to taste
salsa

Preparation:

- Find the ripest avocados you can – they should be soft when squeezed gently, with dark-green skin. Avoid brown avocados, which are too ripe.
- Cut each avocado in half, working around the large, smooth pit.
- Separate the avocado halves and remove the pit.
- Scoop the avocado flesh out of the skins.
- Use a fork to mash the avocados until smooth-some chunks are OK. Use a food processor for large amounts of avocado if you like, but avoid overprocessing.
- Add minced fresh garlic, lemon juice, chives and cubed tomato. Add salt and salsa to taste, if desired.

Vídeo: How to make guacamole