a food blogger´s nightmare

If you ever wondered what´s the worst thing that could happen to a food blogger (I know you have wondered, come on, admit it), I have the answer for you: food poisoning!

That´s exactly what happened to me this week… though I´m still not sure which food was to blame or if it was a stomach virus or something… either way, I felt like crap for 2 days, and then had to stick to a strict diet for the rest of the week, which doesn´t really constitute a fun topic of discussion, especially if I had decided to give you all the details of my ordeal… it´s one of those situations in which there´s a clear line of TMI one shouldn´t cross.

So that´s why I haven´t blogged this week, that and me being a bit lazy, but I probably should ignore that bit of information, see? I guess I did share too much information after all. Well, anyway, I did have some nice encounters with food the previous week.

This one was a nice and quick meal I enjoyed by cutting down some raw cauliflower, roasting it in a pan with some spices for a few minutes (paprika, cumin, curry, and ginger), then adding a touch of water and letting it cook for around 10 minutes, and adding some grated parmessan and chopped scallions at the last minute and serving it. Cauliflower never tasted better, quite spicy, with very complex flavours… which is another way to say it was so damn good. I served the cauliflower with a delicious Jewish onion bread I made and froze a few weeks ago.

So I´m gonna leave you with just the photos of that particular meal and promise to translate the recipe of the bread for you tomorrow.

I wish you all a good start of your week, with no food poisoning on the horizon.

UPDATE: Fulfilling my promise, after the jump is the recipe for the Jewish onion bread (called pletzalej). Enjoy!

Onion pletzalej (translated and adapted from 145 Recetas de panes y facturas, by Marcelo Vallejo)

Yields 60 little buns

Starter:

Dry yeast, 10 grams

Water, 75 cc

Sugar 1 teaspoon

All purpose flour, 2 teaspoons

Dough:

All purpose flour, 1 kilo

Salt, 2 tablespoons

Water, 575 cc

Malt extract, 1 teaspoon (I didn´t use any and they were fine, but if you have some, use it, it helps create a moist bread)

Butter, softened, 70 g

1 egg, slightly whisked, to brush

Onions, chopped and slightly browned, 1 kilo

Poppy seeds (optional, I didn´t use any)

1. For the starter: mix the yeast with the lukewarm water, add the sugar and the flour and whisk slightly with a fork. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rise for 10 minutes.

2. For the dough: put the flour mixed with the salt in a bowl, make a hole in the middle and pour the lukewarm water there, along with the malt extract, the softened butter and the starter. (Here I added around half of the onions so they would be evenly distributed instead of just having onions on top, but that´s really up to you.)

3. Join the ingredients until you get a soft dough. Knead until the dough is tender and homogeneous. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rest for 20 minutes.

4. Roll out the dough till it´s around 1/2 cm thick. Cut circles of around 6 cm of diameter (as you can see, I did squares instead).

5. Put the circles (or squares) on slightly oiled pans. Brush them with egg wash, place quite a bit of onion over each circle (and sprinkle with the poppyseeds if you are using any). Cover and let rise till they double their size.

6. Preheat the oven to 200°C.

7. Cook the pletzalej for around 25 minutes.