Jota -Turnip soup - Minestrone

Eng

Jota is a traditional Slovenian soup. It was the dish of poor people, in the basic recipe is no meat because it was an expansive ingredients and is suitable also for vegetarians. Usually they add some meed only at Sunday and feast days.
In the first step we will brawn the flour and garlic in the oil. With this procedure they add some taste to the soup, because the other ingredients are very simply and poor.

Ingredients
I will not give you the amount of the ingredients, every cook had her own recipe and also the amounts depend of what they had or they can buy.

oil
garlic
flour
sourly turnip
beans
potatoes
laurel
salt
paper



Brown the garlic and the flour in the oil in a large pot, add the turnip, the potatoes and beans, laurel, salt, paper and cover with water. Cook for 1h and 30 minutes al least. At the end I smashed the potatoes to make the soup dense.
It will be better the next day.


Slo

kot pri vseh enolončnicah količine sestavin niso pomembne, saj je vse odvisno od okusa in od tega kaj imate v hladilniku.

Sestavine
olje
česen
moka
kisle repa (ali zelje)
fižol
krompir
lovor
sol
poper

Česen in moko prepražimo na olju, ko je moka svetlo rijave barve dodamo še ostale sestavine, repo/zelje, fižol, krompir, lovor, sol, poper in vse prekrijemo z vodo. Kuhamo 1h in 30 minut, nato sem joto zgostila tako, da sem zmečkala krompir.

Ginger bread - Medenjaki

Medenjaki are a typical Slovene winter cookies they are smelly, sweet and good. I didn't know how to translate the name, I translated with ginger bread because one of the ingredients is also some ginger powder and the taste is quite similar.

Medenjaki

300 g honey
200 g butter
100 g  candied fruit (pomaranča in/ali limone)
2 eggs
750 g flour
150 g grounded almonds, hazelnuts or/and walnuts
spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, pepper, cardamom)
2 baking powder
4 table spoons of sugar

If you like very sweet cookies fill free to add more sugar.

Preparation

Warm the honey in a pan, but be careful not to exceed 40 degrees, add the butter and the sugar. When it cools down ad 2 eggs. Mix the dry ingredients, the flour, spices, almonds or hazelnuts or walnuts, baking powder,candied fruit. Then mix the dry ingredients and the liquid ingredients until combine.

Put the dough in the refrigerator and leave for the night. When the dough will be cold you will easily make the cookies, I roll small balls and then I flatten them. You can also make different shapes.


Bake them for 15 minutes on 180 degrees C.


.

You can also prepare a glaze, combine 1 egg white and 200-250g of superfine sugar (I didn't do it).

Toasted hazelnuts

Toasted hazelnuts are in my opinion much much better than non toasted and more suitable fore baking.

The preparation is very easy, put the hazelnut in a sheet and bake them for 10-20 minutes at 180 degrees.

The pealing is most boring part of this preparation, to make it easier rub them together in this way the skin will come of. You can put them in a clean towel or do it with the hands as I did it.

I use the toasted hazelnuts in the recipe of the Chocolate pralines with hazelnuts.

Chocolate pralines with hazelnuts

this is a very easy recipe!
The most hard thing is not to eat the pralines right away.

Very important is also not to worm the chocolate over 60 degrees. Over that temperature will start to separation the ingredients of the chocolate and will start to burn. I melt the chocolate very slowly using a  hot-water bath. When the water was hot I lower the hit and want to do some other staff in the kitchen, I always can find something to do :)

Ingredients
300g dark chocolate of good quality
180g toasted hazelnuts
2 spoons of sugar

Procedure


Grind a little bit the hazelnuts, joust to have some smaller peace. If you prefer you can also leave them hole or finally grind them if you prefer.


Melt the chocolate in the hot-water bath. You can easily prepare a water-bath, joust take 2 pans one smaller and one bigger. In the bigger pen put some water, then put in the bigger pen the smaller one, in the smaller one the chocolate (as you can see in the picture). Be careful because the smaller pan should not fall in the water!

When the chocolate is melt add 2 spoons of sugar and the hazelnuts and mix together.

Water-bath and the melt chocolate

With 2 small spoons make a nice pralines on a parchment paper .

Wait until cold, usually 4-5 hours.

Risotto with saffron

this risotto do not have a lot of ingredients and this is why the ingredients must be very good to get a nice dish.

This is a typical side dish in the Italian cosine. If you want to prepare the real risotto you must firs brown the rice in olive oil on a medium heat, than ad some water or soup and cook for a white. Constantly add some liquids when the rice is start to be dry. The Italian risotto is always had some liquid and is never dry. I prefer more wet risotto, this is a meter of taste. In this recipe I use arborio rice that is perfect for preparing the risotto.

rice with saffron

Ingredients
rice
onion
saffron
oil
water or soup (or Bouillon cube)
salt

Peal the onion and cut in half, brown the rice and the onion in the olive oil. Add some water or soup and leave the rice to cook, add some liquid if the rice is star to dry. Usually is better to add less liquid more frequently, because the rice must absorb the liquid of the onion.
When the rice will be almost ready add the saffron and the salt.

low qualiti saffron

1g good quality saffron

On this pictures you can see the difference between a good and bad quality of saffron. First I add the low quality saffron and the colour was very pale colour.