BBQ Party

Quick and delicious Summer Salad

Ingredients

1 small red onion
1 avocado
1 cup feta cheese
1/4 watermelon
8 strawberries
10 cherry tomatoes
1/2 cucumber
Handful of lettuce
Handful of basil
2 teaspoons lime juice
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Black pepper
Salt

Instructions

Cut and slice the ingredients as you please, it's still gonna be one hell of a salad.

In other news

On Saturday we organized a cute little picnik just for us two in Bear's garden. Panda barbequed and Bear made a salad and a cake (from which we don't have a decent photo, so for now we're not going to post the recipe either). Later on we moved inside, turned off the majority of lights to get that cozy vibe,  made a pile of blankets on Bear's living room floor, under the glass doors that open to garden to be able to gaze outside and got our cuddles on. Woke up like this... flawless... Panda, Bear and a Dog. We wish we could have our really own dog already, but Panda says it's not happening until we have our own house with a big beautiful garden. Any ideas how to get rich fast? We're all ears. So on Sunday we barbequed... yes, again... let a Panda loose in a meat store with an empty stomach and he ends up buying the whole store. As the sun was about to set, we managed to escape Bear's parents, who wanted to put us on garden duties and finally got the chance to try out the new trains to get to Panda's place.

The end.

Yours truly,

Bear and Panda

Crunchy Peach Pie

Ingredients

Pie Crust

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 

1 teaspoon salt 

1 tablespoon sugar 

1 cup unsalted butter (room temperature) 

1/4 to 1/2 cup ice water

Filling

6 large peaches, peeled and sliced 

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 

1/4 cup brown sugar 

1 vanilla bean, halved with the seeds removed 

1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom 

3 tablespoons cornstarch 

1/4 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Pie Crust


In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and sugar. Add the butter and, using your hands, squeeze together the butter and flour until it resembles coarse sand.
 Add 1/4 cup of ice water and mix together the dough with your hands until it holds together when squeezed. If needed, add more ice water by the tablespoon until the dough reaches this consistency.
 


Filling

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius.


In a large bowl, combine peach slices and lemon juice. Set aside.


In a medium bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, vanilla bean seeds, ground cardamom, cornstarch, and salt. Sprinkle over the peaches and mix until evenly coated. Set aside once more.


On a lightly floured surface, roll out half of the pie crust dough into a circle and transfer to a pie pan. Gently press dough into the bottom and sides of the pan. Add the pie filling.
 


With the remaining dough, roll it out into a rectangle, keeping the thickness the same as the bottom crust. Using a long knife, cut the dough into 1-inch thick strips and arrange in a lattice pattern on top of the pie. Cut off any excess from the strips and pinch together the top and bottom pie dough to make a sealed edge around the rim. 

Bake the pie for 50-60 minutes, or until the pie crust is browned and the fruit is bubbly. Remove the pie from the oven and allow to cool for 2 hours before cutting into it.


Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or simply on its own.



In other news

A bear and a panda walk in to the zoo. Albeit being an awesome start to a joke, we really did make it to the zoo this weekend. After standing in the line (which has never really happened before) we had a nice sunny little walk around the zoo. Okay who are we kidding, most of our time was spent watching a little polar bear cub prance around the cage. When it went back inside for a hard earned nap, we sneaked out of a closed gate and had some nice italian noms in Rucola. 

Oh, and how do you know that they postponed the ice age again? Varblane lounge is open! Watermelon this, watermelon that, Oprah is giving away watermelon stuff for everyone! No but seriously, watermelon mojito and a watermelon-kiwi shisha go together so well.

Our next post will be from prison for breaking out of the zoo.

#renegade





Yours truly,

Bear and Panda

THE ROLL

Makes two as-big-as-your-arm rolls. 

Why is it called THE ROLL? Because when you are finished with it, you will look like THE ROLL (Panda is free to discuss about selling this title if you are a indie filmmaker).

Ingredients

Olive oil

1 onion, roughly chopped

5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

Handful of chopped basil

2 chillies, roughly chopped

500g ground turkey

250g parmesan

2 tablespoons cranberry sauce 

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon sriracha sauce

Sea salt flakes

Freshly ground black pepper

2 sheets of ready-rolled puffed pastry

200g thinly sliced prosciutto

1 egg, lightly beaten

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Line baking sheet with baking paper. Chop the onion and sauté until golden brown. Set aside to cool. Now roast the chillies and garlic over medium heat and set them aside too. 
Once the onion, chilly and garlic are cool, add the basil, turkey, parmesan, cranberry sauce, mustard, sriracha, salt and pepper. 
Using your hands, mix everything together really well. Line pastry sheet with the prosciutto, over-lapping each slice. Divide the turkey mixture into two equal portions. Make a long sausage of turkey paste along one edge of the pastry. Now roll it! Use knife to cut slits along the tops of the roll and brush with egg mixture. Bake for 30-35 minutes, until golden brown.

Prepare to be fat. And happy. Fappy.

In other news

So, Panda got back from Mallorca this Thursday and since we hadn't seen or barely talked in a week plus we got so little time for ourselves on Friday and Saturday, that we stayed home all Sunday. Watched old movies and photography documentaries, cuddled on Panda's MOST uncomfortable couch ever and cooked. Actually Panda cooked, Bear was photographing the process and distracting Panda with little kisses every chance she got (oops). Hope you will have time to try out Panda's THE ROLL recipe, Bear strongly advises it since it is her favourite meal (besides honey). Also take a look at this breathtakingly surreal photo in the end which Panda took in Mallorca, surely set the bar pretty high for all you photographers out there, didn't he?

Stay hungry! Stay foolish!

Yours truly,

Bear and Panda

Mangotastic Cake Off

Ingredients

350g of Oreos

70g of butter

600g of crème fraiche

4 eggs

50g of sugar

2 ts of vanilla sugar

70g of condensed milk

200ml of coconut milk

200g of canned mangoes

8g of gelatine

Right on, let’s get crackersmackin’!

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius.

Start the cakeism with melting the butter on your stove. Next up, take the Oreos, fight back the urge to eat them all, put them in a bag or a towel and crush them by hand or smack them with the cutting board. Put some baking paper in the cake pan and mix the Oreos and melted butter together and fill a cake pan with that mixture. Use a little elbow grease to cover the pan evenly.

Whip the eggs together with sugar, add the crème fraiche, vanilla sugar, condensed milk and coconut milk. Give it a nice stir with the good old whisk. Now pour the mixture on the Oreo layer, throw it in the oven and cook it for an hour. 

Almost done now. Blend the canned mangoes to a nice and smooth purée like state. Use mixture of cold water and gelatine (PS! gelatine should be covered in cold water, but not too much), next up fill a large skillet with water, take a smaller skillet or a pot, and submerse it in that boiling water to melt the gelatine. Two bottom layers of your cake should be done by now, mix the mango purée with the gelatine, pour it on the cake and put it in the freezer for at least 2 hours. It’s even better if you can leave it there for the night. Be sure to lock the freezer because sneaky pandas might be out there to steal your cake.

Enjoy with a nice cup of mint tea.

In other news

Now for the promised gayness. Since this cake involves a rather sophisticated (I mean you can’t whip it together in one go) steps, we suggest that you use the time between those steps for a nice nerve calming walk in the woods. At least that’s what we did. Panda usually refuses to leave the house without his camera, so here are a few snaps from our walk in the idyllic woods of Nõmme. And nothing beats the feeling of eating some cake after a nice long walk. Do not try to think about the cake too much tho, your stomach rumbling will scare away the squirrels. 

This is an original chef de Bear cake

This is an original Retarded Panda production

Nom on!

Yours truly,

Bear and Panda