Lovely readers,
I would like to introduce you to The Oven Experiments’ new contributing blogger, my sister Besma, who is going by the name (for the time being as I am still trying to figure out how come her name does not come out as Besma) busymomskitchen (her up and coming food blog for busy moms).
Here is a list of her blogposts on The Oven Experiments:
And one coming right away.
Enjoy!
I recently impulse-bought a new cookbook on baking with whole grain flours, Good to the Grain, and so I decided to go to Al Raha Stone Mill in Qadsiya Co-Op to stock my cupboard with some oats and different kinds of flours.
I am big fan of this shop and I love how knowledgeable their staff are. It’s very rare in Kuwait to go into a shop and find the shopkeeper actually know what they’re talking about. I mentioned them here and here.
Of course I couldn’t stop after getting what I went for. I saw a selection of different kinds of goat cheese, which are made locally at their goat farm, and saw ricotta goat cheese. I had to get it!
I also grabbed a bag of 4 grains flat bread and went back home.
In a bowl, I spooned some of the ricotta cheese, added barbeer, mint, cucumber slices, walnuts, green olives, a drizzle of olive oil and a few flakes of sea salt.
And what I had was one of the most satisfying simple meals ever! The bread was on the sour side which I love and the cheese was so smooth and creamy.
*picture taken from my iPhone using the ShakeItPhoto, an application that gives a Polaroid effect.
Marron glacé. This is a treat I had to accustom my palate to. All my life up until 3 years ago I assumed I did not like marron glacé! Why? Because as a child I tried it and hated it and so I grew up thinking I didn’t like it.
My mother, on the other hand, loves it and always has. Three mother’s days ago, I decided to change the routine and make her marrons glacés instead.
When I had my BDesserts business I got some of my supplies from a local company that imports French products called FAMECO and they sent out recipes on a monthly basis and one of them was how to make marrons glacés. It seemed fairly easy and it was. This is when I had my first bite as an adult and fell in love with it.
I made it again yesterday and this what you need: Continue reading
Ever since I was a little girl, French onion soup has been a favorite. So when I fell upon the treasure of a cookbook (my mother’s 70’s edition of the Betty Crocker’s Cookbook) when still young and learning to cook, naturally the first soup that I would attempt was the French onion soup. Simple and basic, it’s easy to make and tastes great. Of course, as I learned more about cuisine, I began to add French herbs, some wine (de-alcoholised in our case) and proper gruyere cheese. This weekend, I made it for my visiting sisters that have been craving it for a while. But this time, I added a new ingredient that I learned of from Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking. The addition of egg yolks gave the soup a new dimension and a subtle creaminess that we loved. Thank you Elizabeth! And now for the soup:
Yes you read it right, camel milk chocolate! Never did I think that anyone would think of making chocolate using camel milk! So you can imagine my surprise and my hesitation when my friend and colleague handed me a bag of camel milk chocolate bars after her return from a trip to Dubai. Each bar has a different flavor as you can see from the image below.
I took the 70% chocolate bar and broke a small piece and placed it on my tongue. As it melted, the chocolate had an unfamiliar taste. It was strong. I’m not sure if it was the camel milk or because I was thinking too much. But I liked it.
So if you happen to be in Dubai and feel a bit adventurous, then why don’t you try some camel milk chocolate and while you’re at it, how about a camel burger?
Pumpkin + sage = a true marriage in heaven with the inclusion of butter well then you would just reach nirvana!
My cousin who is on her spring break wanted to make ravioli together. My usual filling for ravioli is ricotta cheese mixed with shredded parmesan and dried oregano and I would serve it with roasted tomato sauce. I love this combination but I wanted to try something new.
My sister as a way of shortcut once made pasta with cubed pumpkin cooked in butter and and sage until very soft and ever since I tried that I had fallen in love with this idea. So I wanted to translate this idea into ravioli…
Well first I had to make the pasta which is honestly the easiest thing. Continue reading
My cousin’s birthday was last weekend and I wanted to be the cake person! I already knew that I was going to have a simple chocolate cake with whipped white chocolate ganache filling and white buttercream as frosting. I have done this combination many times, which is inspired from November’s Jude cake, but little did I know that I would find ready-made marzipan at Sultan. And oh the excitement! I was going to make made-from-scratch marzipan for a certain somebody’s birthday later this month so initially I bought the packets for that project. Continue reading
For the first time in Kuwait, Kuwaiti writer Sarah al-Hamad’s signed recipe book from the Arabian Gulf, Cardamon and Lime: Recipes from the Arabian Gulf, is available at the museum shop at Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah’s al-Maidan Cultural Centre in Maidan Hawalli. Continue reading
For the past few months, I have been experimenting with yogurt-making and this is also when I first bought my yogurt machine.
My first experiment failed, miserably. It looked like semi-yogurt when it was still in the fridge but as soon as it was out of the fridge it became liquid, more like laban! For my first attempt, I followed the instructions that came with the machine., which was basically mixing a litre of milk with 1/4 cup yogurt and then adding it to the machine.
On my second attempt, I adjusted it slightly by adding two tablespoons dry milk powder. It turned out fine but it was still very liquidy! And then I tried to adjust the amount of the milk powder and I even used the yogurt that I made as a starter thinking it would work.
I would of course still eat it but it was still not yogurt! I remember once giving up on a batch I made, so my mother took it and made it into labnah. It turned out really good!
It’s been awhile since I last used it. I was lately inspired in the supermarket (Co-Op) the other day and bought milk and activia yogurt to use as my starter. After some research online, I finally used the long-route method.
And this is the result… Continue reading
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