I Sugges this Recipes

Heres a nice quick salad, with tangy flavours and a good crunchy texture. Next time I make it, Ill cut things finer than I did this time, I think. They should be a little coarser than if you had grated them, but not by too much.

This has been a difficult year in the garden in many ways as it has been so cool and damp, but the fennel is loving it, and I have the best Ive ever grown. Ill need to think of more ways to use it. Two little kohlrabies are preferable to one larger one, as they will likely be more tender, but you make salad with the kohlrabies that you have, not the ones you wish you had. I did have two little ones, as the kohlrabies are not loving it - all the brassicas have been so disease and bug-ridden this year - but I dont know that they were notably tender. Still, they were okay, once they were peeled and trimmed.

4 to 6 servings
20 minutes prep time


2 medium-small kohlrabies
OR 1 large kohlrabi
1 medium bulb fennel
1 large apple
the juice of 1 large lime
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons sunflower seed OR olive oil
salt

Peel the kohlrabies and cut them into fine julienne. Trim the tough stems and base from the fennel, and slice it very finely. Peel the apple if you like, although if you have a red one the colour will add a nice touch - I suggest you leave it on. At any rate, cut it in quarters, core it, and cut it in fine julienne to match the rest of the vegetables. Toss them all with the lime juice.

Mix the honey, mustard and oil in small bowl  until well amalgamated, then toss it with the salad. Season it with a little salt to taste.




Last year at this time I made Beans with Peppers & Shiitakes. Couldnt make that this year! Between anthracnose (yes, its as orrible as it sounds) and cold, the beans are over.

Gluten-free coconut chocolate layer bars.

Now get ready to party.

Read more + get the recipe >>

I finally got round to making those coconut balls, and here are the results. I only made half a recipe, which was enough for seven balls, about the size of golf balls.

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(I have also added a second photo to the original recipe).

I was contacted by Freyja (if you know Icelandic you can read her comments), who tried the recipe and wrote back to say that the cookies tasted a bit too much of raw oatmeal. She also suggests using icing sugar instead of regular sugar, which I agree with, since there isnt really enough moisture in the dough to dissolve the sugar grains.

The balls came out looking just like bakery made ones, but neither the taste nor the texture was enough like the coconut balls you can buy from bakeries. Bakery coconut balls are chewier and the texture is similar to thick cookie dough. These are harder, the sugar has not melted properly (as Freyja commented) and the oatmeal taste is too raw. Rum or sherry drops could help with the raw taste, as could reducing the oatmeal and replacing part of it with dessicated coconut and increasing the butter slightly. Melting the sugar in the milk or using icing sugar and processing the oatmeal into finer pieces in a blender might help with the texture, as could mixing it in a mixer instead of by hand. Finally, it could be made softer by using good quality Dutch process cocoa instead of melted chocolate. I think I will test these changes the next time I make them (whenever that will be).

After sampling a few, I stored the balls in the refrigerator and tried one the next day and another one the day after, and found that they improve with age. On day 2 the raw taste was gone, while the sugar still crackled slightly between the teeth, but on day 3 the sugar had dissolved and the texture was more like the bakery stuff. The problem is, they just look too tempting to store them for this long and I can not see it happening in homes with children.

Freyja came up with this recipe, which she says is delicious (it certainly sounds like it):

175 g dark chocolate
200 g marzipan, sorry, got a correction from Freyja: Its actually coconut mass (made by Odense)which is similar but not quite the same
1/2 dl oatmeal
50 g butter
vanilla essence to taste

Mix marzipan, butter and vanilla, and oatmeal mixed in. Melted chocolate added to the mixture, rolled into balls and coated with coconut.

The next time I need to make something with marzipan, I think I will try this recipe. It sounds good enough for Christmas, but whether it resembles the bakery recipe remains to be seen. I imagine the texture must at least be similar.

P.S. I seem to recall that, as a child taking my first year of home cooking classes, I made coconut balls from mashed potatoes into which were kneaded icing sugar, cocoa powder and vanilla essence, and rolled in dessicated coconut, but for the life of me I cant find the recipe anywhere.