Pimp my Dish! Spicy Mexican Chicken Wraps with Jeroen

This will be the first "Pimp my Dish" blog, in Pimp my Dish I will invite a friend of mine to help me cook one of their favorite dishes but in a slightly different way than they're used to. My first "guest" was Jeroen and his favorite dish was fajitas. I went online to find out what exactly the difference was between fajitas, wraps, tacos, enchiladas and a whole lot more.
Just to make it easy for everyone, I'm just going to name this dish Spicy Mexican Chicken Wraps.

This recipe is for two very hungry students, or three not so hungry students.

• 400 gr chicken breast
• 1/2 red pepper
• 1/2 yellow pepper
• 1 red onion
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 red chili
• lettuce
• greek yogurt
• fresh or dried mint leaves
• 1 spring onion
• small can of tomato puree
• 3 small tomatoes
• water
• cayenne pepper
• salt
• black pepper
• 25ml tequila (they sell minis at most of the check outs at liquor stores)

For the tortillas (if you want to make them yourselves).

• 300 gr flour
• 175ml tepid water
• 2 spoons olive oil
• 2 ts baking powder
• pinch of salt

slice 3 cloves of the garlic and the red chili. Mix this with the tequila, some salt, pepper and the cayenne pepper. This will be the marinade for the chicken. So if you have the time, do this de night/day before so the chicken can really absorb the flavor. But it's perfectly fine if you make it 30 minutes before dinner. Chop the chicken in small pieces, put it in the marinade and put this in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Now mix the flour, tepid water, olive oil, baking powder and salt and knead this for at least 5 minutes. Leave this in a warm spot for 30 minutes (cover it with a tea towel or something like that).

Preheat the oven to 170C/335F

Now is the perfect time to slice the lettuce, 3/4 of the red onion, red and yellow peper and the spring onion. You will eat this raw on your wrap, so put this is in cute bowls on the table. You can also make the greek yogurt with mint now: simply chop the mint very small or crumble it with your hands if you have dried leaves and mix it through the yogurt. This yogurt will give your wrap a hint of freshness (which you will need, because the wraps are very spicy).

After half an hour, slice the remaining 1/4 of the red onion and chop the last garlic clove, put some olive oil in a hot pan and fry these babies. Then add the chicken, while waiting for the chicken to be cooked, dice the tomatoes. When the chicken is no longer raw, add the tomatoes, tomato puree and some extra water so you have a nice sauce (if you want, you can add a stock cube but I think the chicken has enough flavor because of the marinade). Leave this on a low heat to simmer.

Now you're going to make your own tortillas. Try to divide the dough so you can make 6 to 8 tortilla's. Try to make them as flat as possible with a rolling pin.

Then take a large frying pan and make sure the pan is really hot (don't use any oil or butter and try not to burn yourself like I did).
Simply fry the tortilla on both sides for maybe a minute and then put it in the oven so that they will stay nice and warm. When you're done, bring everything to the table and enjoy your home cooked wraps!

enjoy!

White Chocolate Cheesecake with a Raspberry sauce

This was my masterchef audition dish and I personally think it's the best cheesecake EVER made. But that's just me, so I dare you to make it as well.

This recipe is for a small cheesecake and you can still feed about 8 people with it because cheesecake can be heavy on the stomach, but it's good. so good. love it.

It does take a while to make this, so I suggest that you make this de day before you want to eat it with your friends or by yourself.

• 125 gr ginger cookies (speculaas for the Dutch people, and then add some ginger as well)
• 60 gr butter + bit extra to grease the tin.
• 250 gr frozen raspberries
• 2 sp tabwater
• 300 gr cream cheese
• 4 gr vanilla sugar
• 150 gr white chocolate
• 65 ml creme fraiche
• 2 eggs
• fresh basil
• black pepper
• 1 ts gelatine powder
• 5 sp white caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 160C/310F and grease the cake tin.

crumble the cookies in a food processor and melt the butter in a small sauce pan. Mix these two together and cover the bottom of the tin. Leave this to cool in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Now use another small sauce pan to make the raspberry-basil sauce. Add as many basil as you want, the frozen raspberries, the water, the gelatine powder and 2 spoons of the caster sugar. Leave this boil for at least 5 minutes. Then push it through a sieve with the round side of a spoon and put this also in the fridge with another basil leave for at least 15 minutes.

Now melt the white chocolate with the creme fraiche and the black pepper on a low heat.

While this is melting mix the cream cheese, 3 spoons of the caster sugar, vanilla suger and the eggs together until it looks nice and creamy. Then add the melted chocolate.

Take the cake bottom and the sauce out of the fridge when it has been in the there for the correct amount of time and now you will add everything in layers.

so first add some of the cream cheese mixture. Then you take a spoon and do a Jason Pollock with the sauce. Then add another layer of the cream cheese mixture and then the sauce again until your out of cream cheese. I like to keep some of the sauce separate to put in the cheese cake when it's done, but that's up to you.

Then when everything is in the cake tin, find a skewer and just poke in the mixture a couple of times, this will make sure your cake has a very artistic look when you slice it (haha).

now the next part is very specific for my cheesecake:

Boil some water and put this in a baking dish in a lower part of the oven. Make sure your cheesecake is in the middle of the oven. Leave it in the oven for 1 hour, then let it cool down in the oven for 20 minutes and then turn the oven on again for another 20 minutes. Then turn on the gril on for a few minutes because I like my cheesecake a bit darker, stay near the oven when you're doing this. You don't want to burn this delicious cake. And then let it cool down in the oven again for 30 minutes. Then 30 minutes outside the fridge and then for as long as possible inside the fridge.

And then you have an AMAZING cheesecake. 

Tiramisu Dutchie Style

I have this really old laptop, I got it a few years ago when I graduated high school (about 6 years ago). If I would be more like my brothers, nephews and uncles I would have bought a new one after maybe 1 or 2 years, but I didn't. Me and my Toshiba, we're homies. Sometimes a part breaks off, or it stops charging, but when something like that happens I give my uncle a call and I take the first train possible so he can fix my best friend. And when I go there I always take a cake or some type of dessert with me as a thank you.

I think my laptops enjoys spending time at my uncle's, because it decided to stop working when I was in the middle of making a tiramisu. So the next day I hopped on a train with my tiramisu to see my uncle again. I had never made a tiramisu before so I didn't know if my own creation would be a success. But my uncle and nieces approved of it (yay) and they said that it tasted like "Sinterklaas" (a Dutch holiday slightly similar to Santa Clause and Christmas). And that made sense, the Sinterklaas-flavor, because it contained pepernoten, a typical Dutch cookie we eat when it's Sinterklaas. 

So here's the recipe!

·         100 gr dark chocolate

·         50 ml sweet white wine

·         150 ml Greek yogurt

·         150 gr cream cheese

·         125 ml whipped cream (which you still have to "whip')

·         3 eggs

·         200 gr pepernoten (or use another biscuit, but this is really nice!)

·         nob of butter

·         125 ml fresh espresso 

·         50 gr sugar

·         ts salt

Make the espresso first and add 25ml of the sweet white wine and set this aside, it has to cool down. 

Take out two bowls, because in one bowl you have to put the egg yolk and in the other the egg white. Whisk the egg white and the 50 gr of sugar until you can turn the bowl upside down above you're head and nothing falls out. 

In the other bowl, whisk the egg yolks and add the cream cheese and the yogurt. Now turn that non-whipped cream into real whipped cream (haha) and add it to your cream cheese-yogurt mixture. You can now also add the egg whites. And if your feeling naughty today, add a bit of the sweet white wine as well (but not too much because else it wont set in the fridge). 

The espresso should be cold by now, so you can dip your pepernoten/biscuits in the coffee and put them in a glass tray or bowl which you will use to make your tiramisu.

Now melt the chocolate with the butter and the teaspoon of salt. When it has a smooth texture add 25ml of the sweet white wine and then poor everything over your pepernoten/biscuits. Now poor the mixture you made before on top of that. To top it all of you can grate the last 10 gr of chocolate over your tiramisu. 

Leave this fine looking dessert in the fridge for at least 1 hour, but the longer it stays in there, the stronger the coffee flavour will get (yum!).