Spring again! Food again! Issue #02/2012

Happy spring time everybody!

While it did take us a good chunk of time to come out with this post, rest assures we did not put this blog to rest. We’ve been busy in our respective lines of work – Ira was cooking, styling and shooting food for various magazines, and Jive at one point saw himself facing more work than he deemed manageable,  so it resulted in a silent period for FoodThruALens.

And while we were trying to extend the amount of hours in a single day from 24 to anything greater, the calendar saw quite a few pages turned, and voila – here comes the spring, and all the culinary deliciousness that comes attached. So today we’ll share a few insights in our springtime menu with you guys.

Let’s kick it off with a delicious soup of green peas:

Cook a leek in a saucepan, adding 1-2 tablespoons of vegetable oil, until it becomes soft. Add 3 cups of  green peas, cover and simmer for another 5 minutes. Then put in mint leaves from 3 sprigs, add 1 cup milk or chicken broth, salt and pepper to taste and simmer until the peas are soft (about 5 minutes). Mash potatoes, serve with a slice of fried bread and parmesan cheese.

Spring time  is Easter time, and if you are wondering what’s typical for the Easter food-wise in some parts of Europe, here’s a clue (left image). This is one of the European Easter bakery products, which vary from country to country but are more or less similar in their simplicity and yumminess :)

By the way, if you are from Germany and the image on the right looks familiar to you, that’s probably because it has bee featured on the cover of the LandGenuss magazine’s recent issue. They really did a great job sourcing delicious recipes; if you red German, go check them out!

Up next, a not-so-ordinary recipe of an apple dessert, which you really can impress your friends with (if they have to drive though, be sure not to let them get too impressed). We found this recipe at the Gourmet Traveller’s website, and it is a-ma-zing!

Here is the how-to:

3/4 cup sweet (red) vermouth
3/4 cup honey
1/4 cup sultanas
1 orange
1/4 tsp  ground cinnamon
1 tbsp  brown sugar
6 pink lady or royal gala apples, cored (unpeeled)
1/4 cup unblanched almonds, roasted and coarsely chopped
to serve – mascarpone

Heat vermouth and honey in a saucepan over medium heat, bring to boil, reduce heat to low and cook for 10 minutes or until syrupy. Add sultanas, remove from heat and cool.

Preheat oven to 160C. In a bowl, combine orange juice and rind, cinnamon and sugar. Thinly slice each apple crossways (keeping slices together). Dip each slice in orange juice mixture, then place apples in a baking dish. Using a slotted spoon, remove sultanas from syrup, combine with almonds and spoon into the core of each apple. Drizzle apples with syrup and remaining orange juice. Roast apples, basting occasionally, for 40 minutes or until apples are tender. Serve with mascarpone.

Other than that, here are a couple of images from the recent session:

And as this issue is coming to its end, here are just a couple of shots with roses that were made recently